Nobody ever told me, 'Art is this.' This was good luck in a way because I would have had to spend half of my life forgetting everything that I had been told, which is what happens with most students in schools of fine arts.
In a photo, you just do a click, but in art you have to put in so much energy. This concentration of energy and attention says something that other media cannot say.
Sketching is almost everything. It is the painter's identity, his style, his conviction, and then color is just a gift to the drawing.
I had wanted to be a sculptor throughout life, but to do so, I had to stop painting.
My work is a self-portrait of my mind, a prism of my convictions.
There's nothing more superficial to do than to paint a beautiful woman. The most beautiful portraits in art were of ugly women. If you paint Brigitte Bardot, it's a disaster. Sunsets, you have to stay away from sunsets. You paint a sunset, you are in great danger.