I wouldn’t mind revisting the old beauties of Europe although my tendencies tend toward the Orient, or if in Europe, in the Medieval where the two strains and attitudes meet in the abstraction of the human and the divine ideas. Bodhisattvas and Saints, of Gothic so similar in conception - not super-human, as an oriental said, but non-human, yet not mechanical. (February, 1953)

Much has seemed to stop with me and a new me has to be found. (April 6, 1953)

Am convinced we moderns haven’t anything to say because we don’t seem to have life to live as he (Lautrec) did and the others. Of course there is always nature but there has been a breakdown there, or so I think. (May, Chicago 1953)

As usual, upon returning from the east I went into a funk - but have painted like a dog and am sorry to say that with the exception of one large one, The Edge of August, I have not been successful except in my ability to wipe off all but the one mentioned. The painting is on masonite, 48x28, the largest so far. Perhaps I am wrong but the way it changes color with light is a miracle. I only noticed it this afternoon when I came downstairs; it had turned to all the lunar colors one sees around the moon. The composition is strange and the brushstrokes multitudinous. (July, 1953)

Truly, I should not have come back so soon - I cannot, nor have I ever been able to paint otherwise than in relation to how I live. As I live and feel, I paint. (August, 1953)

I have painted but got stuck on a big one - so much preparation usually before I can begin to operate from the inside. (January, 1956)

I want an all black and white show. Dan’s intuition as to something new on the horizon, when I sent the small ones, materialized and I think I now have the cumulation of the Eastern influences brought to a focus and quite exciting. If not, I shall stop showing. Takizaki here says no one in Japan has done what I can and have done. I know Kline exists and Pollock, but I have another note. (Juli, 1957)