I'm Not An Abstractionist... I'm Not Interested

You Think My Paintings Are Calm, Like Windows In Some Cathedral? You Should Look Again. I'm The Most Violent Of All The American Painters. Behind Those Colours There Hides The Final Cataclysm.

I'm Not An Abstractionist. I'm Not Interested In The Relationship Of Color Or Form Or Anything Else. I'm Interested Only In Expressing Basic Human Emotions: Tragedy, Ecstasy, Doom, And So On.

The Reason For My Painting Large Canvases Is That I Want To Be Intimate And Human. To Paint A Small Picture Is To Place Yourself Outside Your Experience, To Look Upon An Experience As A Stereopticon View Or With A Reducing Glass. However You Paint The Larger Picture, You Are In It. It Isn't Something You Command.

The Romantics Were Prompted To Seek Exotic Subjects And To Travel To Far Off Places. They Failed To Realize That, Though The Transcendental Must Involve The Strange And Unfamiliar, Not Everything Strange Or Unfamiliar Is Transcendental.

If You Are Only Moved By Color Relationships, You Are Missing The Point. I Am Interested In Expressing The Big Emotions - Tragedy, Ecstasy, Doom.