And all of this, all these physical aspects of painting at that time excited me very much. You could do a picture in just black and white. I mean all the things, whether you're soliciting permission or not, do give you permission.

I think a painting is more like the real world if it's made out the real world.

And also the new excitement and variety of ways that the abstract expressionists were applying paint. You could put it on as though it were colored air and it would be painting.

Very quickly a painting is turned into a facsimile of itself when one becomes so familiar with with it that one recognizes it without looking at it.

There was a whole language that I could never make function for myself in relationship to painting and that was attitudes like tortured, struggle, pain.

Pollock also... wanted one to be wrapped in the painting.

I'm not so facile that I can accomplish or find out what I want to know or explore enough of the possibilities and a way of making a painting, say, in just one painting or two paintings.

I liked sculpting better than painting. You have more freedom in sculpting.

I studied all about Gauguin. He was a banker. He was a banker who - he used to paint on Sundays. And one day he hated himself for painting on Sundays.

I never consciously said, 'I want to be an actor.' It sounds stupid, but it's kind of like being a painter or something. You don't say, 'From today on I'm going to be a painter.' It's not something conscious - you've just been painting pictures all your life.

It is only when I lose contact with the painting that the result is a mess. Otherwise there is pure harmony, an easy give and take, and the painting comes out well.

I'm very representational some of the time, and a little all of the time. But when you're painting out of your unconscious, figures are bound to emerge.

I have no fear of making changes, destroying the image, etc., because the painting has a life of its own.

I hardly ever stretch the canvas before painting.

I don't work from drawings. I don't make sketches and drawings and color sketches into a final painting.