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I Can Get Excitement Watching Rain On A Puddle. And Then I Paint It. Now, I Admit, There Are Not Too Many People Who Would Find That Exciting. But I Would. And I Want Life Thrilling And Rich. And It Is. I Make Sure It Is.

-David Hockney

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I Can Get Excitement

David Hockney

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I Can Get Excitement Watching Rain On A Puddle. And Then I Paint It. Now, I Admit, There Are Not Too Many People Who Would Find That Exciting. But I Would. And I Want Life Thrilling And Rich. And It Is. I Make Sure It Is.

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There's A Chinese Proverb That Says It All: Painting Is An Old Man's Art.

Great Claims Are Being Made For The Photograph As Truth. We Are Showing You Things, We Show You The War. I Say You Can't Actually. The Camera Can't.

What The Art Historians Had Forgotten Is That In Chinese, Japanese, Persian, And Indian Art, They Never Painted Shadows. Why Did They Paint Shadows In European Art? Shadows Are Because Of Optics. Optics Need Shadows And Strong Light. Strong Light Makes The Deepest Shadows. It Took Me A Few Years To Realize Fully That The Art Historians Didn't Grasp That. There Are A Lot Of Interesting New Things, Ideas, Pictures.

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Who's Going To Ask A Painter To See A Diploma? They'd Say, 'can I See Your Paintings?', Wouldn't They?

And Then I Went Round The Corner And There's A Van Gogh Portrait, And You Just Think, Well, This Is Another Level. A Higher Level, Actually. I Love The Sargent, But It's Not The Level Of Van Gogh.

The Problem Is, Photographic Dyes And Printing Inks Aren't As Good As Paint, Actually.

I Believe That The Very Process Of Looking Can Make A Thing Beautiful.

Most Artists Work All The Time, They Do Actually, Especially Good Artists, They Work All The Time, What Else Is There To Do? I Mean You Do.

It Is Difficult To Say Why I Decided I Wanted To Be An Artist. Obviously, I Had Some Facility, More Than Other People, But Sometimes Facility Comes Because One Is More Interested In Looking At Things, Examining Them, More Interested In The Visual World Than Other People Are.

In One Gallery They Actually Had A Notice Which Said No Sketching. How Obnoxious! I Said, How Do You Think These Things Got On The Walls If There Was No Sketching?

I Was Never That Interested In Movies. I Was Interested In Them As A Thing, But I Didn't Want To Make Movies. I Always Wanted To Draw And Paint.

Drawing Is Rather Like Playing Chess: Your Mind Races Ahead Of The Moves That You Eventually Make.

There's No-one Up There In Northern Norway, Food's Terrible, But It's Very, Very Beautiful To Look At, If You've Got Eyes, And Enjoy Looking.

Until Cubism, All Art, All Pictures, Could Be 'read' By Anybody. If This Hadn't Been So, The Christian Message Wouldn't Have Been Seen By Peasants And Its Importance Would Have Been Diminished.

West Yorkshire Is Quite Dramatic And Beautiful, The Crags And Things.

Before He Did All Those Lovely Line Drawings, Matisse Would Make Really Detailed Charcoal Drawings And Tear Them Up. He Wouldn't Leave Them About... I Understand What He Was Doing: Discovering What's There... To Make The Line Meaningful, To Find A Linear Solution.

I Usually Only Draw Myself In Down Periods... I Suppose That's Why I Often Draw Myself Looking Grim. I Just Think, 'let's Have A Look In The Mirror.' When You Are Alone And You Look In A Mirror You Never Put On A Pleasing Smile. Well, You Don't, Do You?

I Think I’m Greedy, But I’m Not Greedy For Money - I Think That Can Be A Burden - I’m Greedy For An Exciting Life.

Any Artist Will Tell You He's Really Only Interested In The Stuff He's Doing Now. He Will, Always. It's True, And It Should Be Like That.

There Would Be No Bohemia Without Smoking.

I Haven't Stopped Painting Or Drawing - I've Just Added Another Medium.

The Only People Who Need Degrees Are Dentists And Brain Surgeons.

With Chemical Film, It Was Possible To Alter Photographs, But You Had To Be An Expert. That's Not True Any More. The La Times Fired A Photographer At The Beginning Of The Iraq War For Editing Two Shots Together. Photography Is Crumbling. Certainly It Is For The Newspapers A Bit Now, Isn't It? There Will Be Painting Again, Absolutely!

But The Moment You Use An Ordinary Camera, You Are Not Seeing The Picture, Remember, Meaning, You Had To Remember What You've Taken. Now You Could See It Of Course, With A Digital Thing, But Remember In 1982 You Couldn't.

What I Didn't Know Was I Was Deeply Attracted To The Big Space.

I Thought The Iphone Was Great, But This Takes It To A New Level - Simply Because It's Eight Times The Size Of The Iphone, As Big As A Reasonably-sized Sketchbook... Anyone Who Likes Drawing And Mark-making Will Like To Explore New Media.

Well, In Bradford I Could Say I Was Brought Up In Bradford And Hollywood.

The Lens Is A Tyranny.

Every Good Artist I Know, I Always Think Works Hard, We're Working All The Time.

Listening Is A Positive Act: You Have To Put Yourself Out To Do It.

Effective Listening

Just Because I’m Cheeky, Doesn’t Mean I’m Not Serious

I Do Believe That Painting Can Change The World.

Changing The World

I Never Work With Music. I Hate Background Music, Always Did. I Only Like Music In The Foreground, Meaning, Deliberately Listen To It, Actually.

Background Music

Drawing Makes You See Things Clearer, And Clearer And Clearer Still, Until Your Eyes Ache.

Nature, Never, Never Let's You Down, It's Not A Cliché, Nature Isn't A Cliché, Pictures Might Be, But You Can Get Tired Of Pictures.

Once My Hand Has Drawn Something My Eye Has Observed, I Know It By Heart, And I Can Draw It Again Without A Model.

I'm Coming 'round To The View That There's Only A Personal View Of The World.

I'm A Very Early Riser, And I Don't Like To Miss That Beautiful Early Morning Light.

Loads Of People, Particularly Artists, Hate Pretty Pictures. Now I've Never Met Anyone Who Didn't Like A Pretty Face.

Cubism Was An Attack On The Perspective That Had Been Known And Used For 500 Years. It Was The First Big, Big Change. It Confused People: They Said, 'things Don't Look Like That!'

The Camera Can't See Space. It Sees Surfaces. People See Space, Which Is Much More Interesting.

I'm Very Attracted To The Great Open Spaces Of The West.

I Actually Think The Deafness Makes You See Clearer. If You Can't Hear, You Somehow See.

I've No Doubt That Those Photographs I Took Will Make People Look At Everything In A More Interesting Way - The Little Tear On One Piece Of Paper, The Shadow On Another. But Good Painting Has Always Done That - Made You See Things. And The Most Ordinary Can Be The Most Extraordinary.

Painting And Drawing Has Been Here For 35,000 Years.

I've Always Been Interested In Space In Pictures. I Think My Going Deaf Increased My Spatial Sense, Because I Can't Get The Direction Of Sound. I Feel That I See Space Very Clearly, And That's Because I Can't Hear It. So It's A Compensatory Thing.

People Criticized Me For My Photography. They Said It's Not Art.

You Always Need A Bit Of Low-tech.you Always Need A Pair Of Scissors, It Seems To Me. You Can Do Better Things.... The High-tech, Somehow, You Do Have To Combine It With Low-tech Things.

The Picture Itself Is A Document. How Do You Mean? We're Looking At A Document. It Gives You Clues.

Water In Swimming Pools Changes Its Look More Than In Any Other Form Its Colour Can Be Man-made And Its Dancing Rhythms Reflect Not Only The Sky But, Because Of Its Transparency, The Depth Of The Water As Well. If The Water Surface Is Almost Still And There Is A Strong Sun, Then Dancing Lines With The Colours Of The Spectrum Appear Everywhere.

Faces Are The Most Interesting Things We See; Other People Fascinate Me, And The Most Interesting Aspect Of Other People - The Point Where We Go Inside Them - Is The Face. It Tells All.

I Had Always Planned To Make A Large Painting Of The Early Spring, When The First Leaves Are At The Bottom Of The Trees, And They Seem To Float In Space In A Wonderful Way. But The Arrival Of Spring Can't Be Done In One Picture.

I'm Fed Up With Being Bossed Around.

Water Colours Are Wet Colours In Water.

I'm Rather Shocked By What I Thought Was Simple Mindedness Actually. I Thought They're Not Looking, They're Not Actually Looking.

The Video Camera Dominates Art. It's A Bore, It Makes Everything Look A Bit The Same. If You Look At Things With A Pencil And Paper In Your Hand, You Are Going To See Far More.

I Went To Art School Actually When I Was Sixteen Years Old.

Picasso Is Still Influencing Me. Of Course, I Haven't Got That Kind Of Energy, Or Skill.

I Think Picasso Was, Without Doubt, The Greatest Portraitist Of The 20th Century, If Not Any Other Century.

Everything Does Come From Nature. That's Where You Get New Ideas. Just Draw The Landscape. I Felt Doing It With A Bit Of Burnt Wood Was Also Good Because I Was Drawing Burnt Wood With A Piece Of Wood. I Wanted To Do Black And White. After Using Color, I Thought Black And White Would Be Good. You Can Have Color In Black And White. There Is Color In Them, Actually.

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On The Iphone I Tended To Draw With My Thumb. Whereas The Moment I Got To The Ipad, I Found Myself Using Every Finger.

All Film Directors, Even The Ones Using 3-d Today, Want You To Look At What They Chose.

I See The Ipad As A Wonderful New Drawing Medium, But I Am At A Loss As To How To Make It Pay.

I Can Often Tell When Drawings Are Done From Photographs, Because You Can Tell What They Miss Out, What The Camera Misses Out: Usually Weight And Volume - There's A Flatness To Them.

The Moment You Can Learn To Deal With Homosexuality In Art, It's Quite An Exciting Moment, Just As In A Sense When People 'come Out' It's Quite An Exciting Moment. It Means They Become Aware Of Their Desires, And Can Deal With Them In A Remarkably Honest Way.

In Art, New Ways Of Seeing Mean New Ways Of Feeling; You Can't Divorce The Two, As, We Are Now Aware, You Cannot Have Time Without Space And Space Without Time.

I Believe That The Problem Of How You Depict Something Is A Formal Problem. It's An Interesting One And It's A Permanent One; There's No Solution To It. There Are A Thousand And One Ways You Can Go About It. There's No Set Rule.

In Fact, Most Artists Want To Make Things A Bit More Difficult For Themselves As They Go Along, To Challenge Themselves.

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I've Finally Figured Out What's Wrong With Photography. It's A One-eyed Man Looking Through A Little 'ole. Now, How Much Reality Can There Be In That?

You Had To Be Aware That I Saw That Photography Was A Mere Episode In The History Of The Optical Projection And When The Chemicals Ended, Meaning The Picture Was Fixed By Chemicals, We Were In A New Era.

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It's Time To Debate Images, Especially When Someone's Going To Prison For Downloading Them.

It's A Myth That If You're Liked By Only Four People It Must Be Good. It Might Also Be Very Bad: They Might Be Your Mother, Your Brother, Your Uncle And Your Aunt.

The Vanishing Point Leads To The Missiles Of Today, Which Can Take Us Out Of This World. It Could Be That The West's Greatest Mistakes Were The 'invention' Of The External Vanishing Point And The Internal Combustion Engine.

I've Always Said That The Only Thing A Photograph Is Good At Capturing Faithfully Is Another Flat Surface.

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The 'how' Has A Great Effect On What We See. To Say That 'what We See' Is More Important Than 'how We See It' Is To Think That 'how' Has Been Settled And Fixed. When You Realize This Is Not The Case, You Realize That 'how' Often Affects 'what' We See.

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I Can Get Excitement Watching Rain On A Puddle. And Then I Paint It. Now, I Admit, There Are Not Too Many People Who Would Find That Exciting. But I Would. And I Want Life Thrilling And Rich. And It Is. I Make Sure It Is.

It Takes A Long Time To Make It Simple.

All Painters Are Interested In Photography To A Certain Extent.

The Moment You Cheat For The Sake Of Beauty, You Know You're An Artist.

It's Very British To Go About To See Something Unusual And Paint It.

Technology Brought In The Mass Media And Technology Is Now Taking It Away.

I'm Really Only Interested In Technology That Is About Pictures. I'm Interested In Anything That Makes A Picture.

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No One Has Ever Asked To See My Degree Certificate.

I Think Cubism Has Not Fully Been Developed. It Is Treated Like A Style, Pigeonholed And That's It.

Style Is Something You Can Use, And You Can Be Like A Magpie, Just Taking What You Want. The Idea Of The Rigid Style Seemed To Me Then Something You Needn't Concern Yourself With, It Would Trap You.

Britain Is A Very Small Country With A Very Large Press.

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I'm Always Excited By The Unlikely, Never By Ordinary Things.

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I Never Talk When I'm Drawing A Person, Especially If I'm Making Line Drawings. I Prefer There To Be No Noise At All So I Can Concentrate More.

It's All Right If You Don't Mind Looking At The World From The Point Of View Of A Paralyzed Cyclops—for A Split Second.

I Think I’m Greedy, But I’m Not Greedy For Money – I Think That Can Be A Burden – I’m Greedy For An Exciting Life. I Want It To Be Exciting All The Time, And I Get It, Actually. On The Other Hand, I Can Find Excitement, I Admit, In Raindrops Falling On A Puddle And A Lot Of People Wouldn’t. I Intend To Have It Exciting Until The Day I Fall Over.

We Live In An Age Where The Artist Is Forgotten. He Is A Researcher. I See Myself That Way.

Once You Start Painting, You Could Of Course Get Lost. I Mean You Get Out Of Yourself, You Don't Know Whether You're Thinking, You Just Act Actually Sometimes.

When You Stop Doing Something, It Doesn't Mean You Are Rejecting The Previous Work. That's The Mistake; It's Not Rejecting It, It's Saying, 'i Have Exploited It Enough Now And I Wish To Take A Look At Another Corner.'

Photography Hankers After The Condition Of The Neutral Observer. But There Can Be No Such Things As A Neutral Observer. For Something To Be Seen, It Must Be Looked At By Somebody, And Any True And Real Depiction Must Be An Account Of The Experience Of That Looking.

The Photograph Isn't Good Enough. It's Not Real Enough.

It Sometimes Takes A Foreigner To Come And See A Place And Paint It. I Remember Someone Saying They Had Never Really Noticed The Palm Trees Here Until I Painted Them.

It's No Good Saying I Wished I Could Go Out More, Because I Can't. But I Don't Bother About It Too Much.

I Have Got An Ipad, What A Joy! Van Gogh Would Have Loved It, And He Could Have Written His Letters On It As Well.

I Was Always Interested In Photography Because It Makes A Picture.

Drawing Takes Time. A Line Has Time In It

All Painting, No Matter What You Are Painting, Is Abstract In That It's Got To Be Organized.

Until I Saw My Drawings Replayed On The Ipad, I'd Never Seen Myself Draw. Someone Watching Me Would Be Concentrating On The Exact Moment, But I'd Always Be Thinking A Little Bit Ahead. That's Especially So In A Drawing Where You Are Limiting Yourself, A Line Drawing For Example. When You Are Doing Them You Are Very Tense, Because You Have To Reduce Everything To Such Simple Terms.

A Lot Of People, Given The Chance, Would Blow Up Everything, And You And Me.

It's Difficult To Talk About Colour, Even Remember Colour Actually.

As You Get Older, It Gets A Bit Harder To Keep The Spontaneity In You, But I Work At It.

I Was Always Struck By How Picasso Had No Interest In Music.

If You Go Too Far With Naturalism, There Is No Need To Even Organize; Just Look... And Paint What You See Until The Canvas Ends.

What I Always Longed To Do Was To Be Able To Paint Like I Can Draw, Most Artists Would Tell You That, They Would All Like To Paint Like They Can Draw.

...all Along I've Had An Ambivalent Relationship To Photography - But As To Whether I Thought It An Art Form, Or A Craft, Or A Technique, Well, I've Always Been Taken With Henry Geldzahler's Answer To That Question When He Said, I Thought It Was A Hobby.

Laugh A Lot. It Clears The Lungs.

The Editing Of Moving Pictures Is Geared Toward The Single Image. You'd Have To Edit Things In New Ways.

Faces Are The Most Interesting Things We See

All Art Is Contemporary, If It's Alive, And If It's Not Alive, What's The Point Of It?

I Think The Enlightenment Is Leading Us Into A Dark Hole, Really.

In My Old Age, I'll Be In L.a.

I Think Probably Something Big Can Be Done With Cameras, I'm Not Saying, Er, I'm Saying Chemical Photography's Finished, That Means You Can't Have A Cartier Bresson Again, You Need Never Believe Pictures.

The Cameras Are Getting Smaller, They're Getting More Versatile, And Eventually, I'm Sure You'll Have A Camera With Lots And Lots Of Things On It So You Can Alter The Picture. You Could Alter Perspective.

I'm Sure That The Camera Is Part Of European Art.

How Can Blair Fight A War On Terror? Terror Is Not An Ideology Or An Army; Terror Is A Technique.

Perspective Is A Law Of Optics... The Chinese Did Not Have A System Like It. Indeed, It Is Said They Rejected The Idea Of The Vanishing Point In The Eleventh Century, Because It Meant The Viewer Was Not There, Indeed, Had No Movement, Therefore Was Not Alive.

There's No Need To Believe What An Artist Says. Believe What He Does; That's What Counts.

I Stay Up Nights And Fiddle With My Opera Designs. It's A Bit Obsessive. That's Why I Can't Do It All The Time.

Television Is Becoming A Collage - There Are So Many Channels That You Move Through Them Making A Collage Yourself. In That Sense, Everyone Sees Something A Bit Different.

If You Are Not Playful You Are Not Alive.

I Think I Am Seeing More Clearly Now Than Ever.

Photoshop Came Out Of Painting, And Now It's Going Back To Painting.

About Shadows: Do We See Shadows? Loads Of People Don't. A Camera Will Notice A Shadow, But How Many People Have Got A Shadow In Front Of Them When They Take A Picture And Don't Notice It, And Then They See It In The Photograph Because The Photograph Will Catch The Shadow.

Because I'm Interested In Depiction, Representation, Therefore You're Interested In Photography. You Don't Ignore It.

I'm A Bit Claustrophobic, I Know That Now.

The Way We See Things Is Constantly Changing. At The Moment The Way We See Things Has Been Left A Lot To The Camera. That Shouldn't Necessarily Be.

But, I Would Always Be Thinking Of How Pictures Are Constructed And Colour, How To Use It, I Mean You're Using It For Constructing, Makes You Think About It, The Place Did As Well.

Future Art That Is Based On Appearances Won't Look Like The Art That's Gone Before. Even Revivals Of A Period Are Not The Same.

Time Is The Great Mystery Anyway. And It's Still The Great Mystery In The Moving Picture As Well.

An Artist Might Be Attracted To Hedonism, But Of Course An Artist Is Not A Hedonist. He's A Worker, Always.

No Theoretician, No Writer On Art, However Interesting He Or She Might Be, Could Be As Interesting As Picasso. A Good Writer On Art May Give You An Insight To Picasso, But, After All, Picasso Was There First.

Being Able To Draw Means Being Able To Put Things In Believable Space. People Who Don't Draw Very Well Can't Do That.

I Have Always Believed That Art Should Be A Deep Pleasure. I Think There Is A Contradiction In An Art Of Total Despair, Because The Very Fact That The Art Is Made Seems To Contradict Despair.

Modernism In A Way, Early Modernism, For Instance, In Pictures, Was Turning Against Perspective And Europe. And All Early Modernism Is Actually From Out Of Europe, When You Think Of Cubism Is African, Is Looking At Africa, Matisse Is Looking At The Arabesque, Oceania. Europe Was The Optical Projection That Had Become Photography, That Had Become Film, That Became Television And It Conquered The World.

I Can See That Cinema Seems To Be Finished. Everybody Has A Bigger Screen At Home. I'm Assuming Eventually You Won't Need A Screen At All - These Iphones Will Just Project.

With Watercolour, You Can't Cover Up The Marks. There's The Story Of The Construction Of The Picture, And Then The Picture Might Tell Another Story As Well.

I Avoid The Public Because The English Public Is Too Aggressive These Days For Me.

We All Know A Mirror Reflects Us, If You Look In It. If You Move, The Reflection Moves. If You Project From A Mirror, Meaning It Will Project An Image, It's Nothing To Do With You. The World Seen By Nobody.

It Is Very Good Advice To Believe Only What An Artist Does, Rather Than What He Says About His Work.

You Must Plan To Be Spontaneous.

I Think We Seem To Remember Things In Still Pictures. I Never Gave Up On Painting. When They Said Painting Was Dead, I Just Thought, Well, That's All About Photography, And Photography's Not That Interesting, And It's Changing Anyway.

Enjoyment Of The Landscape Is A Thrill.

I Do Do A Lot Of Talking, Because It Saves Me Listening.

The Choice Is Not Between Drugs And No Drugs, But Between Illegal Drugs And Legal Drugs. Until The 1920s Drugs Were Legal, Why Not Now? Lots Of People Are On Drugs Anyway - It Is Called Medication.

I Want Life Thrilling And Rich. And It Is. I Make Sure It Is.

I Think Photography Has Made Us See The Landscape In A Very Dull Way - That's One Of Its Effects. It's Not Spatial.

Anything Simple Always Interests Me.

Paint Something Every Day.

I'm Convinced That Technology And Art Go Together - And Always Have, For Centuries.

It's All One To Me: Opera, Painting, Drawing, Faxes.

Oh, I Like Smoking, I Do. I Smoke For My Health, My Mental Health. Tobacco Gives You Little Pauses, A Rest From Life. I Don't Suppose Anyone Smoking A Pipe Would Have Road Rage, Would They?

People From The Village Come Up And Tease Me: 'we Hear You've Started Drawing On Your Telephone.' And I Tell Them, 'well, No, Actually, It's Just That Occasionally I Speak On My Sketch Pad,'

My Only Worry Is The Painting I'm Doing. Nothing Else.

I Did Come From A Pretty Independent-minded Family.

I Have Always Believed That Art Should Be A Deep Pleasure...ther E Is Always, Everywhere, An Enormous Amount Of Suffering. But I Believe My Duty As An Artist Is To Overcome And Alleviate The Sterility Of Despair...new Ways Of Seeing Mean New Ways Of Feeling... I Do Believe That Painting Can Change The World.

Photographs Aren't Accounts Of Scrutiny. The Shutter Is Open For A Fraction Of A Second.

You Can't Believe Any Picture Nowadays, If It's Digital. You Can't Really Believe. If You See Me Shaking Hands With Mr. [barack] Obama, It Doesn't Mean I Ever Met Him, Does It?

You Would Think Death Was An Optional Extra Nowadays. Nobody Wants To Tick That Box.

I Have Never Really Done Any Teaching And Maybe I Should Have Done. I Am Not Power-mad Enough.

Teaching People To Draw Is Teaching People To Look

Well You Can't Teach The Poetry, But You Can Teach The Craft.

But Slowly I Began To Use Cameras And Then Think About What It Was That Was Going On. It Took Me A Long Time, I Mean I Actually Played With Cameras And Photography For About 20 Years.

The History Of Photography Needs Clearing Out. It Needs Something Else Now. Because Photography Always Acknowledged There Were Cameras Before Photography.

What An Artist Is Trying To Do For People Is Bring Them Closer To Something, Because Of Course Art Is About Sharing. You Wouldn't Be An Artist Unless You Wanted To Share An Experience, A Thought.

I Made A Photograph Of A Garden In Kyoto, The Zen Garden, Which Is A Rectangle. But A Photograph Taken From Any One Point Will Not Show, Well It Shows A Rectangle, But Not With Ninety Degree Angles.

Anyway I Feel Myself A Bit On The Edge On The Art World, But I Don't Mind, I'm Just Pursuing My Work In A Very Excited Way. And There Isn't Really A Mainstream Anymore, Is There?

The Moment I Got A Very Big Studio, Everything Took Off.

The Thing With High-tech Is That You Always End Up Using Scissors.

No Matter What The Illusion Created, It Is A Flat Canvas And It Has To Be Organized Into Shapes.

I Don't Value Prizes Of Any Sort.

When You're Very Young, You Suddenly Find This Marvellous Freedom. It's Quite Exciting, And You're Prepared To Do Anything.

I'm Not Going To Stop Painting Just To Take Orders.

When You Are Older, You Realise That Everything Else Is Just Nothing Compared To Painting And Drawing.

The Pictures On The Walls Aren't Like Movies. They Don't Move, They Don't Talk, And They'll Last Longer. They Will Last Longer.

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