Photo-like Paintings More Real than Reality

"The artist touched the canvas and spent time to create that, and I can feel it.  Their passion is imprisoned in their work, or maybe it's time that's embedded there, not the passion." (artist)

"I love reading fiction, but I can hardly stand to listen to a fiction writer talk about his or her book—it's like a painter talking about his painting or a composer describing a symphony.  You want to read the novel, you want to see the painting, you want to hear the music—you don't want to hear a lot of talk about it."

"If I was writing about a crow feather, I wanted to make sure I got the shape exactly right, the right point and feel.  This began my incorporating research into my poetry, and to this day, I still do a lot of research to make sure I always portray the natural world correctly." (artist)

"Magic is such a raw, emotional experience, and it can be used as a storytelling device.  Sometimes people scream and run away—what a profound effect!  There is no other art form that can do that.  You cannot make somebody gasp, scream, and run away by looking at a painting or watching a dance routine."

"The ingredients for making a successful work to me are imagination, idea, composition, skill and dedication."

"[Unlike books devoted to writing,] books written for painters do not imply that the chances are that the reader can never be anything but a conceited dauber, nor do textbooks on engineering start out by warning the student that because he has been able to make a grasshopper out of two rubber bands and a matchstick he is not to think that he is likely ever to be an honor to his chosen profession."

"Ever since my childhood I always feel someone is standing with me when I work.  It guides and leads me, and criticizes what I have painted.  It calls my attention to the beauty of anything that could be the personification of sensibility.  I am not sure what it is, but it is always there."

"It's the darker things I find really beautiful.  I guess I haven't learned to paint the lighter parts of life in a way that's pleasing to me, although I think it can be done—Rousseau does it, and so does Richard Diebenkorn." (artist)

"It's like the Japanese with the garden.  Nature is doing all this stuff, and all they do is maybe take a branch and trim it, impose their will on it, and make it grow a certain way.  And they prune, and they keep certain things out.  But the plants are doing most of the work.  It's a two-way street–nature and man working together.  And in painting, the paint has got a texture and it sort of wants to be a certain way.  And a brush is so artificial, and it makes tiny little lines.  After you make a whole bunch of brush strokes, it's something else.  It's not the paint talking, it's too much of the person.  So you've gotta let accidents and strange things happen—let it work, so it's got an organic sort of quality."

"One of the benefits I get from doing [book] covers is, I get to read.  The main thing I like about what I do is that I'm away from reality and the real world where I live, in a make believe one—a land of someone else's imagination—as long as the project lasts.  I need that to survive." (artist)

"The writer who wants to tap the larger truth in himself must reflect the temptations of Joyce or Camus or Tennessee Williams, as exhibited in the literary reviews.  He must forget the money waiting for him in mass-circulation.  He must ask himself, 'What do I really think of the world, what do I love, fear, hate?' and begin to pour this on paper." (artist)

"Francis Bacon is, to me, the main guy, the number one kinda hero painter.  There's a lot of painters that I like.  But for just the thrill of standing in front of a painting… I saw Bacon's show in the sixties at the Marlborough Gallery and it was really one of the most powerful things I ever saw in my life." (artist)

"The Art Spirit that sort of became my Bible, because that book made the rules for the art life.  It was one of those things that is so fantastic, because it sets you on your way."

"That's what it’s like when you're creating things. On the one hand, it really seems like you're keeping it all moving on your own, and you can tell yourself that you've got inspiration raining down on you, but ultimately you can't make anything happen on your own."

"Every painting I've produced falls short of my expectations.  They are my children, but they're all juvenile delinquents.  I'm not proud of them."

"It wasn't fantasy, but there was just something... like, I'd paint a still life but the colors wouldn't be quite like you'd expect them to be.  That's the magic of it, and I love it—the world building that occurs on the canvas as it does on the page."

"I picked up a camera to use in gathering raw material for my paintings, but I quickly loved how much more social photography was: I could actually interact with humans on a real-time basis and have a conversation, which doesn't happen with painting."

"Being creatively satisfied means that you possess the faith that as you connect the dots of your inspiration, bridges will form—and yet more dots will appear.  Once you settle into the idea that that can continue forever, then you are satisfied knowing that there will always be something that draws you in, compels you, and drives you to look closer.  There will always be another way to express yourself.  It's a dance that never ends."

Painting... within a 200-Gallon Fish Tank

"I have this saying: 'There's no music playing when your dreams are coming true.'  That is the hustle.  The hustle is humbling and, at best, completely authentic and gracious."

The Metropolitan Pulse... captured

Landscaping Imagination

"The artistic medium of fiction writers—language—is not innately sensual. The medium is unforgiving whenever we look for it in our minds. Some visual artists do a lot of conceptualizing and still end up creating terrific works of art. They are able to do so because once they get out there in front of their canvases or their blocks of granite, they have to leave those ideas behind. The medium itself won't let them think."

Magical Realism

"It's not what an artist does that counts, but what he is."

"Picasso had incredible talent, but the secret to his genius was this—Picasso’s life blended seamlessly with his work."

"I usually don't have a preconceived notion of what I'm going to create.  Most of the time I sketch with no goal or objective.  My hand will draw something and then it reveals itself to me."

"Self-consciousness is the enemy of all art, be it acting, writing, painting or living itself, which is the greatest art of all ... creativity, at heart, is the essence of man's being."

"One of the essentials is to create a vacuum in my life which can only be satisfactorily filled by some form of creative work—whether it be writing, painting, sculpting, composing or just building a boat."

"I should like to show by my work what such an eccentric, such a nobody, has in his heart."

"A writer is a world trapped in a person." (artist)