“Image making, painting what is around you, what's there. Paint your hand. The other day I was up for two nights and I painted...what do you paint? I don't want to paint art. All I know is, I ate spaghetti that night, so I was involved for three days in painting a plate of spaghetti."
― Philip Guston
Chiang Mai 2018
"But I don't want to paint a plate of spaghetti because I just ate it. Things get transformed. The mound got higher, like I want to make it bigger. I'm not advertising a spaghetti restaurant, so the mound gets higher and higher. Pretty soon it becomes like a Gustave Dore illustration. Millions of people in this big mass, it becomes a big bloody carnage."
― Philip Guston
Nha Trang 2019
"So I get this thing where I am trying to paint my head, my self, my hand, a plate of spaghetti. I started working with the body. Paint my teeth? Mimesis, to make a substitute. And that's probably the greatest urge, the idea for making a substitute for reality. To duplicate that reality and in that duplication, it's not duplication, it's like a super-reality. Probably. I'm not sure about it. Beacause what's reality? You don't know what the hell reality is."
― Philip Guston
Urbana 2011