Anything in art seems cruel because reality is cruel. Perhaps that’s why so many people like abstraction in art, because you can’t be cruel in abstraction.

When you’re using oil paint, it can result in an effect that you cannot control. You can apply a blob of paint, turn the brush in one way or another, and that will produce a different effect each time which will change the whole meaning of the image […] That’s also when something unexpected suddenly appears; it comes with no warning.

Anything I paint, if it comes off at all in my work, I feel it physically, I know it just can’t be working. With all figures that work, I feel that is physically right, and this is a thing that I feel within my body.

The greatest art always returns you to the vulnerability of the human situation.

[…] after all what is art about? It is trying to make something out of the chaos of existence.

I think perhaps that the greatest images that man has made so far have been in sculpture. I’m thinking of some of the great Egyptian sculpture, of course, and Greek sculpture too.