I began in 1976, with small abstract paintings that allowed me to do what I had never let myself do: put something down at random. And then, of course, I realized that it never can be random. It was all a way of opening a door for me. If I don't know what's coming - that is, if I have no hard-and-fast image, as I have with a photographic original - then arbitrary choice and chance play an important part.
Let's look at people as artists and try to support them; just because Picasso painted a couple of bad paintings, that's no reason to say he's a lousy painter.
I was an abstract expressionist before I had seen any abstract expressionist paintings. I started when I was a kid and continued just doing abstract stuff all through high school.
I see paintings everywhere. I look at stuff and it looks like painting to me.
With respect to the use of this sparkling coloured material (butterfly wings around 1955, fh) - the constituent parts of which remain indistinguishable - with the aim of producing a very vivid effect of scintillation, I realised that, for me, this responds to needs of the same order as those that formerly led me, in many drawings and paintings, to organize my lines and patches of colour so that the objects represented would meld into everything around them, so that the result would be a sort of continuous, universal soup with an intensive flavour of life.
All pictures are unnatural. All pictures are sad because they're about dead people. Paintings you don't think of in a special time or with a specific event. With photos I always think I'm looking at something dead.
My paintings are only the ashes of my art
The white paintings came first; my silent piece came later.
The paintings by dead men who were poor most of their lives are the most valuable pieces in my collection. And if an artist wants to really jack up the prices of his creations, may I suggest this: suicide.
I had so many ideas that I wanted to get out at once that it led to simple little drawings and paintings.
The time is a thing; you don't have so much time. A good trick is to try and think about a way to use material from one occupation for the other. It's like going through working a day job, this is so dumb to say, but you know how Julian Schnabel made those crockery paintings while he was working as a short-order cook? It's like that, using what is around, transforming that to create meaning and make art. Trying to take nothing and make. . . something.
Sometimes I think I shouldn't explain much about my work because people will just feel what they feel when they see it. They'll love it or hate it or enjoy it on their own, like how I've looked at abstract paintings of other artists and cried or felt happy because I've felt, "Wow, I've lived that, I've understood that. "
I think that the mythology of Van Gogh's life, and the beauty of his paintings, is unstoppable.
Someday my paintings will be hanging in the Louvre. [Vincent Van Gogh]
The paintings by Van Gough and Chagall had a big influence on me.
I try to create paintings that are a window for the imagination. If people look at my work and are reminded of the way things once were, or perhaps, the way they could be, then I've done my job.
Some people have recognized their friends in my paintings, but I'm not directly responsible for any hooking up as far as I know!
I am inspired by life, past experiences, what's to come, women around me, art, colors, paintings, and emotions.
My paintings are so legible, I feel guilty.
You don't talk about paintings, you look at them.