Guston, Philip

I am a night painter, so when I come into the studio the next morning the delirium is over. I come into the studio very fearfully, I creep in to see what happened the night before. And the feeling is one of, "My God, did I do that?".

To paint is a possessing rather than a picturing.

There's some mysterious process at work here, which I don't even want to understand.

Usually I am on a work for a long stretch, until a moment arrives when the air of the arbitrary vanishes, and the paint falls into positions that feel destined.

There is something ridiculous and miserly in the myth we inherit from abstract art.. that painting is autonomous, pure and for itself, and therefore we habitually defined its ingredients and define its limits. But painting is "impure". It is the adjustment of impurities which forces painting's continuity. We are image makers and image ridden.