that there is the spirit (ri)
It is dawning now;
open the screen,
and lo, the moonlight is
shining in.
I think this poem and Zen and the art of archery is all one needs to know and go ahead and paint - and paint and paint and let out and then judge - if possible. This poem comes from Suzuki’s Zen and Japanese Culture.

We hear some artists speak today of the act of painting, but a State of Mind is the first preparation and from this the action proceeds. Peace of Mind is another ideal, perhaps the ideal state to be sought for in the painting and certainly preparatory to the act.

[...] „writing“ the painting [...] became a necessety. I often thought of my way of working as a performance in that it had to be achieved all at once or not at all. (c. 1954)

I believe that painting should come through the avenues of meditation rather than the canals of action. (From the 60’s)

Work towards and away from that critical moment which takes place in a kind of trance, where solutions happen undreamed-of by conscious mind - the moment when everything fuses.

The artist no longer copies nature. He is interested in what he feels about it.

I like best to see in nature what I want in my painting. When we can find the abstract in nature we find the deepest art.

My main problem in painting is, I believe, rhythm and plasticity, often the sensitivity of touch which one calls a feeling for texture. Because I don’t have any fixed ideas, I should say, no philosophical affinity which conceived methods, my work is obviously in a state