The things that I paint are things that I know very well.
I began drawing when I was nearly 3, and after finishing the sixth grade, I left school to paint and was tutored at home. My father didn't think a formal education was necessary for a painter.
I have continued to paint; my father - who was savaged by the critics - continued to paint until practically the last week of his life.
Painting is a field that attracts a lot of lazy people. You can just sort of sit and wait for things to come to you. I know a lot of painters who'll sit and chat it up all night. But God, I just can't do that.
Everything I paint is a portrait, whatever the subject.
My interest in painting is recording things. I think of myself as almost a documentary filmmaker... I've gotten into some curious situations...
Painting is as difficult as brain surgery. It's not that relaxing. But that's the discipline.
I view anything on this farm as model. I actually painted Union Rags as a yearling.
The great thing about a painter is that he or she lives on - I mean, Andrew Wyeth is more in his paintings than he was walking around.
I'm a very boring person, and all I do is want to paint and to record what I feel moves me or what interests me, and that can be in the form of a pig or in the form of President Kennedy.
I mostly paint animals I'm familiar with, but I did a series of paintings of ravens, so I read everything about them.
Being a painter is the only profession where you have to stand there with all your shortcomings on the wall.
Most of my reading is based on what I'm working on. I did a series of paintings based on the seven deadly sins, so I read Dante and then Milton's 'Paradise Lost.' That was a bit hard going.