If you stare at an object, as you do when you paint, there is no point at which you stop learning things from it..

Morandi gave an intimate view of his deepest thoughts. We watched him inquiring after the devilish questions of essences and substances..

If I don't have anything better to do that day, I'll copy paintings, generally by people who have some relationship to the work of the moment..

Common objects become strangely uncommon when removed from their context and ordinary ways of being seen..

Painting is more important than art..

A conscious decision to eliminate certain details and include selective bits of personal experiences or perceptual nuances, gives the painting more o….

When you think of painting as painting it is rather absurd. The real world is before us - glorious sunlight and activity and fresh air, and high spee….

Discipline is not a restriction but an aid to freedom..

An artist has to train his responses more than other people do. He has to be as disciplined as a mathematician. Discipline is not a restriction but a….

I'm not just interested in the pictorial aspects of the landscape - see a pretty place and try to paint it - but in some way to manage it, manipulate….

Art is one of the dirtiest words in our language; it's mucked up with all kinds of meanings. There's the art of plumbing; there's the art of almost a….

I don't make a lot of distinctions between things like landscape or figure painting, because to me the problems are inherently the same - lighting, c….

Art means something very rare, an extraordinary achievement..

My subject matter was a genuine sort of experience that came out of my life, particularly the American world in which I was privileged to be . . . . ….

If we don't have a sense of humor, we lack a sense of perspective.

I think of myself as a beginner. Sometimes that's the whole joy. If you could just do it, there'd be no point in doing it..

I haven't the slightest idea what art is, but to be a painter is something of which you have to prove..

Every paint-stroke takes you farther and farther away from your initial concept. And you have to be thankful for that..

Commonplace objects are constantly changing… The pies, for example, we now see, are not going to be around forever. We are merely used to the idea th….

My sin as a painter is that I just want to paint anything I want to paint - and repaint..

An artist needs the best studio instruction, the most rigorous demands, and the toughest criticism in order to tune up his sensibilities..