Every line is the actual experience with its own unique story.
It's instinctive in a certain kind of painting...It's like a nervous system. It's not described, it's happening. The feeling is going on with the task. The line is the feeling, from a soft thing, a dreamy thing, to something hard, something arid, something lonely, something ending, something beginning.
I sit for two or three hours and then in 15 minutes I can do a painting, but that's part of it. You have to get ready and decide to jump up and do it; you build yourself up psychologically, and so painting has no time for brush. Brush is boring, you give it and all of a sudden it's dry, you have to go. Before you cut the thought, you know?
I never really separated painting and literature.
When I work, I work very fast, but preparing to work can take any length of time.
I had my freedom and that was nice.
And we who have always thought of happiness climbing, would feel the emotion that almost startles when happiness falls.
I work in waves, because I'm impatient. Because of a certain physicality, of lack of breath from standing. It has to be done and I do take liberties I wouldn't have taken before.
I listed to Tchaikovsky. He is both kitsch and profound. I love that lack of "Good taste."
Paint is something that I use with my hands and do all those tactile things. I really don't like oil because you can't get back into it, or you make a mess. It's not my favourite thing - pencil is more my medium than wet paint.
Graffiti is linear and it's done with a pencil, and it's like writing on walls. But in my paintings it's more lyrical.
I hate roses. Don't you? It's all right if you can hide them in a cutting garden, but I think a rose garden is the height of ick.
I love my sculptures, and I was lucky I had them for 50 years because no one would look at them and I really liked having them around.
I would’ve liked to have been Poussin, if I’d had a choice, in another time.
