I also take pleasure in the so-called negative power in Grotjahn's work. That is I love his paintings for what they are not. Unlike much art of the past decade Grotjahn isn't simply working from a prescribed checklist of academically acceptable curator-approved 'isms' and twists.

Willem de Kooning is generally credited for coming out of the painterly gates strong in the forties revolutionizing art and abstraction and reaching incredible heights by the early fifties and then tailing off.

These days newish art can be priced between $10 000 and $25 000. When I tell artists that a new painting by a newish artist should go for around $1 200 they look at me like I'm a flesh-eating virus.

Poor Georgia O'Keeffe. Death didn't soften the opinions of the art world toward her paintings.

I am more a friend of art than a producer of painting.

Don't be an art critic. Paint. There lies salvation.

The trend in some of the contemporary movements in art but by no means all seems to deny this ideal and to me appears to lead to a purely decorative conception of painting.

It is not hard to understand modern art. If it hangs on a wall it's a painting and if you can walk around it it's a sculpture.

When I am finishing a picture I hold some God-made object up to it - a rock a flower the branch of a tree or my hand - as a final test. If the painting stands up beside a thing man cannot make the painting is authentic. If there's a clash between the two it's bad art.

I realize that protest paintings are not exactly in vogue but I've done many.