There are two things that go on in art. There's getting to the essential material and a design that's inherent in the use of material, and also an es… - Kenneth Noland

I knew what a circle could do. Both eyes focus on it. It stamps itself out, like a dot. This, in turn, causes one's vision to spread, as in a mandala in Tantric art.

Artists are mechanics who work with their hands, making things. Artists are involved with the means of creativity, the nature of skills, the revelation of making. Art comes from the work, I see a painting as an expressive entity. There's no picture that I know of where the subject carries as much expressive possibility as the actual execution of the picture.

Until Abstract Expressionism you had to have something to paint about, some kind of subject matter. Even though Kandinsky and Arthur Dove were improvising earlier, it didn't take. They had to have symbols, suggested natural images or geometry, which was something real structurally. That gave them something to paint about. What was new was the idea that something you looked at could be like something you heard.