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I have had enormous enthusiasm for particular artists, certainly.

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And in many cases, they have been artists who lived in a completely different century from me.

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I like what Picasso said one day. He said,

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"Some young people seem to me older than some artists who've been dead for several centuries."

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[Laughs] That was very good.

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Some of these artists who've been dead for several centuries, their work seems

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Entirely apropos to your own concerns right now. And so you seek them out.

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You seek their work out. And I have traveled very long distances to see exhibitions by Claude Lorrain,

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Or by Jacob Van Ruisdael, and Constable, and various people.

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Turner, I sort of avoided, didn't think he was any good at all,

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Then, one day I was trying to paint smoke and steam coming out of a factory in Pittsburg.

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And I thought, "Oh my god, that guy Turner was an absolute master of these vapors, vapor."

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Constable said that there were some beautiful Turners and they looked like they were

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Made of tinted steam, that's just right. That's exactly right.

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I don't know the techniques of the Ruisdael painting.

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I could no more paint a Ruisdael painting than a man on the moon.

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I know nothing about glazing, I don't use glazing at all.

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I am what I call a direct painter - I put lumps of paint straight down on the canvas.

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If they don't work, I take it off and I try a different lump.

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I don't let it dry and put another layer over, and let that dry, and then another layer.

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You know, I don't work that way.

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So, I don't have any sentimentality about those painters, I don't think.

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It's that they would seem useful to me, and provocative to me.

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They were like challenges to me. Can you, can you do this that well?

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So, I can't access those painters technically,

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But I can access them through various things that their paintings do.