A Really Good Picture Looks As If

You Have To Know How To Use The Accident, How To Recognise It, How To Control It, And Ways To Eliminate It So That The Whole Surface Looks Felt And Born All At Once.

What Concerns Me When I Work, Is Not Whether The Picture Is A Landscape, Or Whether It's Pastoral, Or Whether Somebody Will See A Sunset In It. What Concerns Me Is - Did I Make A Beautiful Picture?

Every So Often Every Artist Feels, 'i'll Never Paint Again. The Muse Has Gone Out The Window.' In 1985, I Hardly Painted At All For Three Months, And It Was Agonizing. I Looked At Reproductions. I Stared At Matisse. I Stared At The Old Masters. I Stared At The Quattrocento. And I Thought To Myself - Don't Push It! If You Try Too Hard To Get At Something, You Almost Push It Away.

We Would Sift Through Every Inch Of What It Was That Worked, Or If It Didn't, And Wonder What Was Effective In It, In Terms Of Paint, The Subject Matter, The Size, The Drawing.

A Really Good Picture Looks As If It's Happened At Once. It's An Immediate Image.