Today I would like to speak about some things concerning my own experience, or some thoughts I have had during my life as a painter. To begin I want to say that the most important thing in painting, as in art generally, is the material. Even in the most spiritual art like music, for instance, which is made of the material of sounds, or like poetry, which employs verbal material. This seems quite obvious. Yet the problem is more complex.
Painting is involved with matter and so are painters.
This body concerns ourselves and our own body because we are made of the same matter, and we are fragile and mortal like everything that is living. In fact painting is a living thing, and its life depends precisely on its material condition. Painters have a double feeling about matter. They are both attracted and repelled by it. Sometimes painters lose their childlike simplicity and are disgusted by matter.