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 experie….

There is only one thing I fear in life, my friend: One day, the black will swallow the red..

When I was a younger man, art was a lonely thing. No galleries, no collectors, no critics, no money. Yet, it was a golden age, for we all had nothing….

There is no such thing as good painting about nothing..

Art to me is an anecdote of the spirit..

The people that weep before my paintings are having the same religious experience that I had when I painted it..

It is the poet and philosopher who provide the community of objectives in which the artist participates. Their chief preoccupation, like the artist, ….

If you are only moved by color relationships, you are missing the point. I am interested in expressing the big emotions - tragedy, ecstasy, doom..

There is more power in telling little than in telling all..

Silence is so accurate..

To me art is an adventure into an unknown world, which can be explored only by those willing to take the risk..

I don't express myself in my paintings. I express my not-self..

The picture must be... a revelation, an unexpected and unprecedented resolution of an eternally familiar need..

I am here to make you think. . . . I am not here to make pretty pictures!.

I use colors that have already been experienced through the light of day and through the state of mind of the total man. In other words, my colors ar….

The artist invites the spectator to take a journey within the realm of the canvas... Without taking the journey, the spectator has really missed the ….

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 em….

I will say without reservations that from my point of view there can be no abstractions. Any shape or area that has not the pulsating concreteness of….

The fact that people break down and cry when confronted with my pictures shows that I can communicate those basic human emotions.. the people who wee….

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 tho….

A painting is not a picture of an experience, but is the experience..