I've always lived in the present.
Present tense.
And I think I'd like my paintings
to be in the present tense.
When I was young I was with a bunch of kids running
around at Halloween night throwing tomatoes, and all
that kind of stuff.
And in the darkness, I was looking at a window.
And I saw a red shape, a blue shape, and a black shape.
And I left the gang, because I was interested-- I said,
"I've got to find out what that is."
And I looked in the window
and I couldn't find what I was looking at.
It was just an ordinary room.
And then so I had to back out slowly and-- And then it
was furniture, a curtain, blue and red.
It's very close to seeing my first abstraction.
When I got to Paris I did some Picasso-type paintings,
and figures, that first six months.
But then I stopped.
I said, "You know, I didn't come to Paris
to be like the paintings that had been done."
And, I saw a show in which the paintings were quite
small.
And I saw the windows, which were about fifteen feet.
And I kept saying, "You know, I like these windows
better than these paintings here."
And I said, "I have to have one."
So I painted the window--I made it so big; I didn't want
to tell anyone what it was.
I felt that it wasn't really kosher to-- to do something
like that.
But I began seeing things in Paris that I lifted.
You know, I made drawings of things, ideas of structure.
Yes, La Combe developed from shadows on a staircase.
I was fascinated by shadows.
I felt like I was picking up something that
was mysterious.
I'm attracted to color and shape.
I feel that people want a content.
They've always had a content.
You know, I mean, figurative, right away there's
a story.
And abstraction has always been, oh, it's abstract.
I think my pictures need time.
Time is very important with art.
And a show, even though it's a couple of weeks,
or sometimes a month, that's not enough time.
You go to the gallery
once, you see it ten minutes or so, and then walk on.
I like to leave my paintings to be mysterious.
I like them to be open.
I feel like they have to be looked at,
they have to be investigated.
I'm not figurative.
But I'm completely abstract, in a-- in a way
that I think I found myself.
I could just say, for instance,
every day of the week, I-- I'm here at the studio.
Something comes to my mind, I make a sketch of it.
It's like the light bulb going on, you know?
And I have to do it.
And right now, since I'm on oxygen,
and I feel like it's very important; I still have work
I have to do.
And this yellow painting over there
is part of a painting that I'm doing.
I definitely have to have that painting done
in my lifetime.