I want my pictures to be things. I want them to be made up of marks that are physically and individually self-sufficient.
A collection makes its own demands. Many artists have been collectors. I think of it rather as an illness. I felt it was using up too much energy.
A painting is finished when the subject comes back, when what has caused the painting to be made comes back as an object.
I think that words are often extraneous to what I do.
I hate painting.
I once was interviewed and got so exasperated that I said, 'What do you want, a shopping list?' They kept asking, 'What's in this picture?'
I'm very envious of the few artists who are any good and still do portraits.
I don't look at the work of my contemporaries very much; I tend to look at pictures by dead artists. It's much easier to get near their paintings.
Collecting has been my great extravagance. It's a way of being. I collect for the same reason that I eat too much-I'm one of nature's shoppers.
I look at my pictures, and I think, 'Well, how did I do that?'
The picture surface recedes just as much in the 20th century as it did in the 15th. The techniques of making pictures have hardly changed.
I don't really have a historical overview of my work at all. I'm not an art historian. I don't see that there's this period and that period.
I don't think you can lightly paint a picture. It's an activity I take very seriously.
I think words come between the spectator and the picture.
Matisse was very clear about saying that you have to blow your own trumpet and explain yourself, which I think has been slightly forgotten.
In England, it's thought to be morally suspect to worry about what your surroundings look like.
When I finish a painting, it usually looks as surprising to me as to anyone else.
I'm vulnerable to criticism. Any artist is, because you work alone in your studio and, until recently, critics were the only way you'd get any feedback.
My friends tend to be writers. I think writers and painters are really all the same-we just sit in our rooms.
I am isolated as an artist, not as a person.
