Nevertheless if any skillful Servant of Nature shall bring force to bear on matter, and shall vex it and drive it to extremities as if with the purpose of reducing it to nothing, then will matter (since annihilation or true destruction is not possible except by the omnipotence of God) finding itself in these straits, turn and transform itself into strange shapes, passing from one change to another till it has gone through the whole circle and finished the period.
If you want to convey fact, this can only ever be done through a form of distortion. You must distort to transform what is called appearance into image.
I have to hope that my instincts will do the right thing, because I can't erase what I have done. And if I drew something first, then my paintings would be illustrations of drawings.
By this means we presume we have established for ever, a true and legitimate marriage between the Empirical and Rational faculty; whose fastidious and unfortunate divorce and separation hath troubled and disordered the whole race and generation of mankind.
For many parts of Nature can neither be invented with sufficient subtlety, nor demonstrated with sufficient perspicuity, nor accommodated unto use with sufficient dexterity, without the aid and intervening of the mathematics, of which sort are perspective, music, astronomy, cosmography, architecture, engineery, and divers others.
I use all sorts of things to work with: old brooms, old sweaters, and all kinds of peculiar tools and materials... I paint to excite myself, and make something for myself.