I realized it wasn't necessary to work in the traditional methods of carving and casting.

- Martin Puryear

I was never interested in making cool, distilled, pure objects.

- Martin Puryear

The most precise work is generally done by hand, with hand tools. Some people rely on machines for their precision, and my way of working is backward…

- Martin Puryear

Although idea and form are ultimately paramount in my work, so too are chance, accident, and rawness.

- Martin Puryear

There is the potential for much more spontaneity with prints than there is with the sculpture, which tends to be very slow, accretive kind of process…

- Martin Puryear

The fire was followed by a period of grieving and then by an incredible lightness, freedom, and mobility.

- Martin Puryear

There remains this belief that the work itself can have an identity that can speak, whether it's through beauty, or through ugliness, or whatever qua…

- Martin Puryear

The work is flowing from an inner knowing of how things really are.

- Martin Puryear

At a certain point, I just put the building and the art impulse together. I decided that building was a legitimate way to make sculpture.

- Martin Puryear