Cy Twombly

"I knew a poet who was totally ignorant about botany. And I said: you cant be a poet without knowing any botany or plants and things like that; its impossible, thats the first thing you should know."

"I think of myself as a Romantic Symbolist."

"Its a sort of infantile thing, painting. Paint in a sense is a certain infantile thing. I mean in the handling. I start out using a brush but then I cant take the time because the idea doesnt correspond, it gets stuck when the brush goes out of paint in a certain length of time. So I have to go back and by then I might have lost the rest of it. So I take my hand and I do it. Or I have those wonderful things that came in later: paint sticks.. .So I had to find things that I could use, like my hands or the paint sticks.. .And I did those charts, big palettes.. .two or three paintings with palettes and all of the colours – pink, flesh, brown, red for blood. And I think with most painters you can think and it can change very fast, the impetus of what something is. Its instinctive in a certain kind of painting, not as if you were painting an object or special things, but its like coming through the nervous system. Its like a nervous system. Its not described, its happening. The feeling is going on with the task."

"I respond to the Greek love of metamorphosis."

"Im drawn to the primitive, the ritual and fetish elements."

"For myself the past is the source (for all art is vitally contemporary)."

"In painting it is the forming of the image."

"Cy Twombly was the first [artist], Robert Rauschenberg shared ideas with]. But Cy and I were not critical. I did my work and he did his. Cys direction was always so personal that you could only discuss it after the fact."

"Ive found when you get old you must return to certain things in the beginning, or things you have a sentiment for or something. Because your life closes up in so many ways or doesnt become as flexible or exciting or whatever you want to call it. You tend to be nostalgic. And I think about my boats. Its more complicated than that, but also its going out and also theres a lot of references to crossing over. But the thing of the Nile boat in Winters Passage: Luxor was about the wonderful thing, the lazy thing, of being two or three months in Luxor by the river. It was just that, it explains a winter passage. From a certain point to the other side: its like the Greek boat that ferries you over to the other world. That sculpture didnt have it. But sometimes the large painting in Houston does have it. Its a passage through everything."

"Its more like Im having an experience than making a picture. So Ive never had anyone around. I never have. People are different, but I have to really be with no interference. And it takes me hours. Painting a picture is a very short thing if it goes well, but the sitting and thinking.. .I usually go off on stories that have nothing to do with the painting, and sometimes I sit in the opposite room to where I work. If I can get a good hot story I can paint better, but sometimes Im not thinking about the painting, Im thinking about the subject. Lots of times Ill sit in another room and then I might just go in. It takes a lot of freedom. Im working for two years on a subject now: ten paintings, and that can carry on for two years. I worked last summer and I started this summer and with just the simplest motif I just cant seem to do it. And everything slowed down."

"Each line is now the actual experience with its own innate history. It does not illustrate — it is the sensation of its own realization. [a written art note by Twombly on a painting he created in 1957]."

"When I work I work very fast, but preparing the work can take any length."