Art works because it appeals to certain faculties of the mind. Music depends on details of the auditory system painting and sculpture on the visual system. Poetry and literature depend on language.

Slowly poetry becomes visual because it paints images but it is also musical: it unites two arts into one.

Painting is silent poetry and poetry is painting that speaks.

I always pet a dog with my left hand because if he bit me I'd still have my right hand to paint with.

I build a kind of wall between myself and t he model so that I can paint in peace behind it. Otherwise she might say something that confuses and distracts me.

The business of peace requires more than showing up with paint brushes foodstuffs and an oil pipeline or two.

Unfortunately after Sept. 11 there was an outburst in America of intense suffering and patriotism and the Bush administration was very shrewd and effective in painting anyone who disagreed with the policies as unpatriotic or even traitorous.

To say to the painter that Nature is to be taken as she is is to say to the player that he may sit on the piano.

I am following Nature without being able to grasp her I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers.

Painting will have to deal more fully and less obliquely with life and nature's phenomena before it can again become great.