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