A painter should begin every canvas with a wash of black, because all things in nature are dark except where exposed by the light.

An artist's studio should be a small space because small rooms discipline the mind and large ones distract it.

Perspective is to painting what the bridle is to the horse, the rudder to a ship.

The mind of the painter must resemble a mirror, which always takes the colour of the object it reflects and is completely occupied by the images of as many objects as are in front of it.

I leave the genre labeling to other people. I really do. If I were to think too hard about it, that would stifle you creatively. If you think too hard about who other people want you to be as an artist, it stops you from being who you want to be as an artist.

A painter without hands who wished to express in song the picture before his mind would, by means of this substitution of spheres, still reveal more about the essence of things than does the empirical world.