You don't paint the way someone, by observing his life, thinks you have to paint, you paint the way you have to in order to give. That's life itself,… - Franz Kline

...it's not an illusionistic thing. It just seems as though there are forms in some experience in your life that have an excitement for you.. ..those sort of forms in your experience do, in some way, not dominate, but they become the things that you are involved with. I don't mean that squares becomes windows; after all, squares becomes heads, they becomes everything you know. I don't mean it in that sense. A curve or line or rhythmical relation do have, in some way, some psychological bearing, not only on the person who looks at them after they've been conceived but also they do have a lot to do with the creative being who is involved with wondering just how exiting it can be..

I do both: I make preliminary drawings, other times I paint directly, other times I start a painting and then paint it out so that it becomes another painting or nothing at all. If a painting doesn't work, throw it out. When I work from preliminary sketches, I don't just enlarge these drawings, but plan my areas in a large painting by using small drawings for separate areas. I combine them in a final painting, often adding to or subtracting from the original sketches.. ..There are certain canvases here in my studio - the little one over there – that I've worked on for a good six months – painting most of it out and then painting it over and over again. I think I've got it now.

In Braque and Gris, they seemed to have idea of the organization beforehand in their mind. With Bonnard, he is organizing in front of you. You can tell in Leger just when he discovered how to make it like an engine.. ..What's wrong with that? You see it in Barney (= Barnett Newman) too, that he knows what a painting should be. He paints as he thinks painting should be, which is pretty heroic..