I really admire paintings that look like an actual snapshot - I think that's just extraordinary.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
The real change that paintings undergo is in the perceptions of the viewer.
My paintings are not about what is seen. They are about what is known forever in the mind.
Painting picture by picture, I followed the impressions my eye took in at heightened moments. I painted only memories, adding nothing, no details that I did not see. Hence the simplicity of the paintings, their emptiness.
I have always wanted to make paintings that are impossible to walk past, paintings that grab and hold your attention. The more you look at them, the more satisfying they become for the viewer. The more time you give to the painting, the more you get back.
You can't just take an image and randomly distort it and call it art - although many people in La Jolla where I come from do precisely that.
Our experience of any painting is always the latest line in a long conversation we've been having with painting. There's no way of looking at art as though you hadn't seen art before.
I don't dare to think my paintings are great. I can't understand the arrogance of someone saying, 'I have created a big, important work.'
I will always find even the worst paintings that attempt some kind of representation better than the best invented paintings.
I don't very much enjoy looking at paintings in general. I know too much about them. I take them apart.
I crave to be able to photograph the way a painter paints - in a loose, expressive way.