I wrote somewhere during the Cold War that I sometimes wish the Iron Curtain were much taller than it is so that you could see whether the development of science with no communication was parallel on the two sides. In this case it certainly wasn't.

Men do change and change comes like a little wind that ruffles the curtains at dawn and it comes like the stealthy perfume of wildflowers hidden in the grass.

Every night half an hour before curtain up the bells of St. Malachy's the Actors' Chapel on New York's 49th Street peal the tune of 'There's No Business Like Show Business.' If you walk the streets of the theatre district before a show and see the vast enthusiastic lines it sounds like a calling: there is certainly no place like Broadway.

It used to happen in villages and towns in China that they would have - I guess you'd call them beauty contests - where all of the women of a particular village or town would be seated behind these screens or curtains with only their feet showing.

And when an architect has designed a house with large windows which is a necessity today in order to pull the daylight into these very deep houses then curtains come to play a big role in architecture.

I paint mostly from real life. It has to start with that. Real people real street scenes behind the curtain scenes live models paintings photographs staged setups architecture grids graphic design. Whatever it takes to make it work.