Pure vision is more in need of an open mind than a perfect soul. (1993)
Category Archives: Painting
Like a bad speech, a bad painting is endurable for the first five minutes. After ten, an enormous amount of patience and polite endurance is required to continue looking at it. After fifteen, it becomes unbearable. After twenty minutes downright annoying – for the repeated yawns it inevitably causes.
The creative process should never be easy. Comfortable, yes. Easy, never.
A bad painting remains a bad painting despite any and all lofty intentions, Master diplomas or artistic statements in its defense.
It is possible to draw and paint if you are afraid of the world but impossible if you are afraid of yourself.
The figurative well rendered is based on logical sensuality whereas the abstract is rooted in sensual logic.
The constant craving to render easy everything we do is the very act by which we ultimately destroy all vestiges of human creative potential.
The ability to see and listen determines whether our artwork is worthy of being looked upon and appreciated over centuries.
If I paint a tomato, I am not trying to create a real tomato. I simply want to feel that delicious constricted reaction in my throat that fresh garden picked tomatoes cause. I want to taste it. Painting is a sensuous act. It cannot be reduced to a lowest common denominator exercise in photo-copying.
As old pieces of furniture are not necessarily antiques, old paintings are not necessarily important artworks.
