It's not supposed to be easy, if it's easy, it's no good, that's the way I look at it.
What makes for great art is the courage to speak and write and paint what you know and care about.
If you can't paint, paint Big.
Visualize what you want to do before you do it. Visualization is so powerful that when you know what you want, you will get it.
There is an instinct for realism, a powerful drive to reproduce oneself. The fascination of photorealistic paintings lies partly in their apparent replication of life, but these are not merely replications. These paintings are often out of life scale, varying from over life-size to under life-size, from brilliant, heightened color to pale, undertone hues.
I believe in the energy of art, and through the use of that energy, the artist's ability to transform his or her life, and by example, the lives of others.
For me art is a continuous discovery into reality, an exploration of visual data which has been going on for centuries, each artist contributing to the next generation's advancement. I wanted to go a step further and extend the boundaries.
. . . there's never a garden in all the parish but what there's endless waste in it for want o' somebody as could use everything up. It's what I think to myself sometimes, as there need nobody run short o' victuals if the land was made the most on, and there was never a morsel but what could find it's way to a mouth.
The secret of adventure, then, is not to carefully seek it out but to travel in such a way that it finds you. To do this, you first need to overcome the protective habits of home and open yourself up to unpredictability. As you begin to practice this openness, you'll quickly discover adventure in the simple reality of a world that defies your expectations. More often than not, you'll discover that “adventure” is a decision after the fact-a way of deciphering an event or an experience that you can't quite explain.
We are bound by the law, so that we may be free.
They have no idea that it can be done by a bus driver, a field hand, or a fry cook. They have no idea where it comes from. It comes from pain, damnation and impossibility. The blow to the soul of the gut. It comes from getting burned and seared and slugged. It comes from. . . new and awful places and the same old places.