We were outcasts, roughly expressionist painters not acceptable to most dealers and collectors.(A reference to the TEN group of painters). - Adolph Gottlieb

Well, I was interested in a subjective image [in the 1940's].. ..stemming perhaps from the subconscious. Because the external world as far as I was concerned had been totally explored in painting and there was a whole ripe new area in the inner world that we all have. Now in order to externalise this you have to use visual means and so the visual means may have some relation tot the external world. However what I was trying to focus on was what I experienced within my mind, within my feelings, rather than on the external world which I can see.

We are going to have perhaps a thousand years of non-representational painting.

After doing the imaginary landscapes until say 1956, in ’57 I came out with the first Burst painting... There was a different type of space than I had ever used and it was a further clarification of what I was trying to do. The thing that was interesting that it was a return to a focal point, but it was a focal point with the kind of space that existed in traditional painting. Because this was like a solitary image or two images that were just floating in the canvas space. They had to hold the space and they also had to create all the movement – that took place within the rectangle.