I make my art on drawing paper, with Indian ink, watercolours and pastels. Nib and brush are my best friends.

The medium is as unimportant as I myself. Essential is only the forming.. .I take any material whatsoever if the picture demands it. When I adjust materials of different kinds to one another, I have taken a step in advance of mere oil painting, for in addition to playing off color against color, line against line, form against form etc., I play off material against material, wood against sack clothes.

Fortunately, the less you have to rely on art materials – what are considered classic art materials which are all overpriced anyway – the more you can rely on materials at large in the culture and the more you should rely on them. The more free you are because you're not tied down to a higher-priced set of materials. That's the advantage of getting out in to the streets. I find that work I'm interested in now is made out of things which have been discarded by people – metals and things which I find in vacant lots. I don't want all of it. I want only certain kinds for certain purposes. But this is of interest to me now, just so I won't get into a trap where I have to work and continue with more and more expensive materials.

The label “objects” is the most appropriate for works which elude clear-cut definitions. Foam sponge, builder's silicone, packaging tape etc. are the main materials which I use to create these works. Sometimes, because of the properties of some of the materials which they are made of they have a limited span of existence. But often the roughness and imperfections become make them artistically strong.

Towards the end of 1958, I greatly increased.. ..the works done with what is called poor material. I felt the need to persist and go deeper with the entire message of what is insignificant, worn or dramatised by time.. .In fact, it was the most conscious resumption of subjects that had often attracted me. In my research, I had discovered this material, one I find loaded with strange suggestions, which is cardboard. A grey, anonymous material that won't be easily manipulated, for which very reason the slightest mark of the hand torments it and destroys it. But the piece of cardboard, the box, the lid, the tray.. ..dirty clothes (socks, T-shirt, underpants...), old furniture, everyday objects; not used as a representation or theme in the picture but as real bodies, objects.

Draw to discover what you see. Write to discover what you think.

Speaking purely for myself, I can say that it was my very acute feeling for the matière, for the substance of painting, which pushed me into thinking about the possibilities of the medium. I wanted to create a kind of substance by means of brush-work. But that is the kind of discovery which one makes gradually, though once a beginning had been made other discoveries follow. Thus it was that I subsequently began to introduce sand, sawdust and metal filings into my pictures. For I suddenly saw the extent to which colour is related to the substance.. .So my great delight was the 'material' character which I could give to my pictures by introducing these extraneous elements. In short, they provided me with a means of getting further away from idealism in 'representing' the things with which I was concerned.

As paint I use lightfast printing ink, usually pure, but also mixed. Mixing is not difficult at all, it but can happen in very different ways. Secret means are not applied, but I can not work on them, except in solitude (at sunshine). No one works in this way. I believe that no one else can obtain the same color effects, except after a lot of practice and experience. Sometimes one print goes up to 50 times under the printing-press. [I make] Never more than one piece per day.

What can an artist use but materials, such as they are? What can he light but the short string of his gut, and when that's burnt out, any muck ready to hand?

Only now I become conscious that my work in black, white and little color planes has been merely 'drawing' in oil color. In drawing, the lines are the principal means of expressions.. .In painting, however, the lines are absorbed by the color planes; but the limitations of the planes show themselves as lines and conserve their great value.

And then, as you can see, I give greater and greater importance to the materials I use in my work [c. 1936]. A rich and vigorous material seems necessary to me in order to give the viewer that smack in the face that must happen before reflection intervenes. In this way, poetry is expressed through a plastic medium, and it speaks its own language.

It is remarkable how suggestive the slightest drawing as a memento of things seen. For a few years past I have been accustomed to make a rude sketch in my journal of plants, ice, and various natural phenomena, and though the fullest accompanying description may fail to recall my experience, these rude outline drawings do not fail to carry me back to that time and scene. It is as if I saw the same thing again, and I may again attempt to describe it in words if I choose.

After working with oil, pastel, and watercolors, I have intentionally returned to working with graphite. It is the most challenging mode of expression to master

My own experience has been that the tools I need for my trade are paper, tobacco, food, and a little whisky.