This past summer I focused on buttercups in tall green grass. I
have been attracted to this motif since the mid-1950s. There is
no perfect solution. If I settle for the tone differences, the
green becomes dead. If I settle for the correct light, I don’t
have the tonal difference and the painting becomes conventional.
This summer, I transposed the green from the actual color green
to a hot yellow-green. I had never done this before. It gave me
the tone difference and the all-over light of the field. I was
nervous about the yellow-green, but friends liked it. When this
painting makes a public appearance, I don’t expect very many
people to understand my problem, or my solution, or the
difficulty in executing it. Actually, I suppose things haven’t
changed for me that much in that area since the 1950s.
The challenge for me has been to paint a painting that could
elicit the
response I experienced looking at great paintings. To
engage in primary structures of novelty art was, for me, a
cop-out. Novelty inventions and gimmicks can have fashion and
style but have much less voltage than a great painting. Painting
does not need you. You have to need painting. Painting has to
become you.
In high school, I was supposed to study advertising, but I
came across beautiful antique drawings, and