From time immemorial it has been one of the deepest longings of the human heart to strain against the erosion of one’s life, to find a way of living and being that manages to find some stable ground within time, a place from where something eternal can be harvested from our disappearance. This is what all art strives for: the creation of a living permanence.

I do art because it's my shot at eternity

"One of the beauties of art is that it reflects an artist's entire life. What I've learned over the past 30 years is really beginning to inform what I make. I hope that process continues until I die.

And my aim in my life is to make picture and drawings, as many and as well as I can, then, at the end of my life, I hope to pass away, looking back with love and tender regret, and thinking: "Oh, pictures I might have made!" Theo, I declare I prefer to think how arms, legs, head are attached to the trunk, rather than whether I myself am or am not more or less an artist.

As an artist, I really try to understand the world that I am living in and on a daily basis, see how I can contribute to it. It’s all about reflecting, questioning and how I can use my time on earth the best way I can. I try to understand human beings and which kind of world we will leave for our children. I believe that there is no time for anybody, which is why I learn as much as I can and see every day as a new day.

As an artist, the thing that you want the most for your work is for it to be alive. Every new thing you do has to feel completely alive to you. And what works for me always is that there has to be some part of it that is brand new to me, more or less something that I haven’t done before ever. Something that scares me or something that makes me feel like it is going to teach me something. Something that I think is smarter than me. Those are the things that I really hope for in every single project that I do. So whatever it may be the projects that I want to do are always the things that are going to make me feel alive doing them, because I don’t want to beat a dead horse.

The true aspiration of art should be to reduce the need for it. It is not that we should one day lose our devotion to the things that art addresses: beauty, depth of meaning, good relationships, the appreciation of nature, recognition of the shortness of life, empathy, compassion, and so on. Rather, having imbibed the ideals that art displays, we should fight to attain in reality the things art merely symbolises, however graciously and intently. The ultimate goal of the art lover should be to build a world where works of art have become a little less necessary

Everything I make, I want to make it evergreen and put in my pain, my all. That’s what I believe is art.

Good art originates not from the desire to show off but from the desire to show yourself. Good art always comes from our desperate desire to breathe, to be seen, to be loved. In everyday life, we are used to seeing only the shiny outer layer of folks. Art makes us less lonely because it always comes from the desperate center of the artist — and each of our centers is desperate. That's why good art is such a relief.

Imagine going to live on a mountaintop by yourself, forever. You build a home that no one will ever visit. Still, you invest the time and effort to shape the space in which you’ll spend your days. The wood, the plates, the pillows — all magnificent. Curated to your taste. This is the essence of great art. We make it for no other purpose than creating our version of the beautiful, bringing all of ourself to every project, whatever its parameters and constraints. Consider it an offering, a devotional act. We do the best, as we see the best — with our own taste. No one else’s. We create our art so we may inhabit it ourselves.

The most important thing about art is to work. Nothing else matters except sitting down every day and trying.

Art is my life and my life is art.

The object of art is not to make salable pictures. It is to save yourself.

The fools who write articles about me think that one morning I suddenly decided to write and began to produce masterpieces.

There is no special trick about writing or painting either. I wrote constantly for 15 years before I produced anything with any solidity to it....

The thing of course, is to make yourself alive. Most people remain all of their lives in a stupor.

The point of being an artist is that you may live....

You won't arrive. It is an endless search.

The aim of art, the aim of a life can only be to increase the sum of freedom and responsibility to be found in every man and in the world. It cannot, under any circumstances, be to reduce or suppress that freedom, even temporarily.