Art Is Much Less Important Than Life,

I Almost Never Start With An Image. I Start With A Painting Idea, An Impulse, Usually Derived From My Own World.

For Twenty Years I Read A Book A Day, From The Time I Was Seven Until I Was Twenty-seven.

An Odd Contradiction, If The Layman Were Correct In His Unconscious Assumption That An Artist Begins With Reality And Ends With Art: The Converse Is True - To The Degree That This Dichotomy Has Any Truth - The Artist Begins With Art, And Through It Arrives At Reality.

If One Were To Ask A Painter What He Felt About Anything, His Just Response - Though He Seldom Makes It - Would Be To Paint It, And In Painting, To Find Out.

It Is True That Every Artist Has His Own Religion.