“What is the explanation of the seemingly insane drive of man to be painter and poet if it is not an act of defiance against mans fall and an assertion that he return to the Garden of Eden? For the artists are the first men.”

The problem of a painting is physical and metaphysical, the same as I think life is physical and metaphysical.

A painter is a choreographer of space.

From the very beginning I felt that I would do a series.

We have lost contact with man’s natural desire for the exalted, for a concern with our relation to absolute emotions.

I know that it is impossible to talk about my work. And since it’s impossible for me or anybody else to talk about my work, I feel I might as well talk about it.

The impulse of modern art was this desire to destroy beauty.

We are in the process of making the world, to a certain extent, in our own image.

Aesthetics is to artists as ornithology is to birds.

I prefer to leave the paintings to speak for themselves.

It is our function as artists to make the spectator see the world our way not his way.

Sculpture is what you bump into when you back up to see a painting.

Painting, like passion, is a living voice.

Any art worthy of its name should address ‘life’, ‘man’, ‘nature’, ‘death’ and ‘tragedy’.

Painting, like passion, is a living voice, which, when I hear it, I must let it speak, unfettered.

Aesthetics is for the artist like ornithology is for the birds.

I hope that my painting has the impact of giving someone, as it did me, the feeling of his own totality, of his own separateness, of his own individuality.