If All The Ways I Have Been

You Can't Escape Your Own Period. Whether You Take Sides For Or Against, You're Always In It.

When You Start With A Portrait And Search For A Pure Form, A Clear Volume, Through Successive Eliminations, You Arrive Inevitably At The Egg. Likewise, Starting With The Egg And Following The Same Process In Reverse, One Finishes With The Portrait.

What Does It Mean For A Painter To Paint In The Manner Of So-and-so Or To Actually Imitate Someone Else? What's Wrong With That? On The Contrary, It's A Good Idea. You Should Constantly Try To Paint Like Someone Else. But The Thing Is, You Can't! You Would Like To. You Try. But It Turns Out To Be A Botch... And It's At The Very Moment You Make A Botch Of It That You're Yourself.

It Would Be Very Curious To Record By Means Of Photographs, Not The Stage Of The Picture, But Its Metamorphoses. Perhaps One Would Perceive The Path Taken By The Mind In Order To Put Its Dreams Into A Concrete Form. But What Is Really Very Curious Is To Observe That Fundamentally The Picture Does Not Change, That Despite Appearances The Initial Vision Remains Almost Intact.

To Finish A Work? To Finish A Picture? What Nonsense! To Finish It Means To Be Through With It, To Kill It, To Rid It Of Its Soul, To Give It Its Final Blow The Coup De Grace For The Painter As Well As For The Picture.