painting

So worried was I that people would see through the painting into my soul - and guess at secret Alison stuff - that I scraped the paint off the canvas. It was too risky to expose what everyone hides...And yet isn't that the job of the artist? Next step is to take the risk - to work more deeply. To expose that which cannot be expressed any other way. That is art. Scary and exciting.

Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rater than seen.

Pollock was terrific. I think he freed himself of all kinds of worry about this world. Ran around and dripped, and then he managed to express ecstasy.

You can’t make a perfect painting. We can see perfection in our minds. But we can’t make a perfect painting.

There’s nobody living who couldn’t stand all afternoon in front of a waterfall .... Anyone who can sit on a stone in a field awhile can see my painting. Nature is like parting a curtain, you go into  it .... as you would cross an empty beach to look at the ocean.

I hope I have made it clear that the work is about perfection as we are aware of it in our minds but that the paintings are very far from being perfect — completely removed in fact — even as we ourselves are.

My paintings are certainly nonobjective. They’re just horizontal lines. There’s not any hint of nature. And still everybody responds, I think.

I paint self-portraits because I am so often alone, because I am the person I know best.

I love you more than my own skin.

I leave you my portrait so that you will have my presence all the days and nights that I am away from you.