People From Wyoming

"There is no "slippery slope" toward loss of liberty, only a long staircase where each step down must first be tolerated by the American people and their leaders."

"If you have integrity, nothing else matters. If you don't have integrity, nothing else matters."

"As a lifelong Republican who served in the Army in Germany, I believe it is critical that we review — and overturn — the ban on gay service in the military. I voted for "don't ask, don't tell." But much has changed since 1993. My thinking shifted when I read that the military was firing translators because they are gay. According to the Government Accountability Office, more than 300 language experts have been fired under "don't ask, don't tell," including more than 50 who are fluent in Arabic. This when even Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice recently acknowledged the nation's "foreign language deficit" and how much our government needs Farsi and Arabic speakers. Is there a "straight" way to translate Arabic? Is there a "gay" Farsi? My God, we'd better start talking sense before it is too late. We need every able-bodied, smart patriot to help us win this war."

"Getting up any cliff is like a physics problem -- you just got to hold on, try everything, and stick with it."

"We have every mixture you can have. I have a black, a woman, two Jews and a cripple. And we have talent."

"If the troubles from environmentalists cannot be solved in the jury box or at the ballot box, perhaps the cartridge box should be used."

"Everything Cheney's saying, everything the president's saying — they're saying exactly what we were saying 20 years ago, precisely … Twenty years later, it sounds like they've just dusted off the old work."

"God gave us these things to use. After the last tree is felled, Christ will come back."

"We will mine more, drill more, cut more timber."

"Liberals have shifted government into a position of being neutral between right and wrong. By concentrating power in government institutions, liberals chisel at the three pillars of society: the family unit, work ethic and faith. That's not good for America."

"The first day was spectacular. ... The second day started to get a little tedious, but the third day I wanted bigger motors to move that raft out. ... On the fourth day we were praying for helicopters and they came."

"I never use the words Democrats and Republicans. It's liberals and Americans."

"My responsibility is to follow the Scriptures which call upon us to occupy the land until Jesus returns."

"That is the delicate balance the Secretary of the Interior must have: to be steward for the natural resources for this generation as well as future generations. I do not know how many future generations we can count on before the Lord returns; whatever it is we have to manage with a skill to leave the resources needed for future generations."

"Expecting to be able to get rid of the competitive drive, first of all, flies in the face of human nature — and little girls certainly have this drive, as much as little boys do, or at least the little girls I have observed in my immediate family have it."

"Pollock ... left us [c. 1958] at the point where we must be preoccupied with and even dazzled by the space and objects of our everyday life, either our bodies, clothes, rooms, or, if need be, the vastness of Forty-Second Street [New York] ... Objects of every sorts are materials for the new art, paints, chairs, food, electric and neon-lights, smoke, water, old socks, a dog, movies, a thousand other things which will be discovered by the present generation of artists ... All will become materials for this new concrete art."

"As to what I would like to be. It is difficult to say. An Artist of some kind. If nothing else I shall always study the Arts. People have always frightened and bored me, consequently I have been within my own shell and have not accomplished anything materially."

"I believe easel painting to be a dying form, and the tendency of modern feeling is toward the wall picture or mural.."

"It came into existence because I had to paint it. Any attempt on my part to say something about it, to attempt explanation of the inexplicable, could only destroy it. [1947, on his painting 'She wolf']"

"My painting does not come from the easel. I hardly ever stretch my canvas before painting. I prefer to tack the unstretched canvas to the hard wall or the floor. I need the resistance of a hard surface. On the floor I am more at ease. I feel nearer, more a part of the painting, since this way I can walk around it, work from the four sides and literally be in the painting. This is akin to the method of the Indian sand painters of the West."

"When I am in my painting, I am not aware of what I'm doing. It is only after a short of 'get acquainted' period that I see what I have been about. I have no fears about making changes, destroying the image, etc., because the painting has a life of its own. I try to let it come through. It is only when I lose contact with the painting that the result is a mess. Otherwise there is pure harmony, an easy give and take, and the painting comes out well."

"Technic is the result of a need new needs demand new technics total control denial of the accident States of order organic intensity energy and motion made visible memories arrested in space, human needs and motives acceptance"

"I can control the flow of paint; there is no accident.."

"My work with Benton was important as something against which to react very strongly, later on; in this, it was better to have worked with him than with a less resistant personality who would have provided a much less strong opposition. At the same time Benton introduced me to Renaissance art. [remark on his former art-teacher w:Thomas Hart Benton ]"

"I accept the fact that the important painting of the last hundred years was done in France. American painters have generally missed the point of modern painting from beginning to end.. .Thus the fact that good European moderns [European artists who lived in the U.S. because of the Nazi-regime] are now here is very important, for they bring with them an understanding of the problems of modern painting. I am particularly impressed with their concept of the source of art being the unconscious. These idea interests me more than these specific artists do, for the two artists I admire most, Picasso and Joan Miró, are still abroad."

"The idea of an isolated American painting, so popular in this country during the thirties, seems absurd to me, just as the idea of a purely American mathematics or physics would seem absurd.. .And in another sense, the problem doesn't exist at all; or, if it did, would solve itself: An American is an American and his painting would naturally be qualified by the fact, whether he wills or not. But the basic problems of contemporary painting are independent of any one country."

"I have a definite feeling for the West, the vast horizontality of the land, for instance.. .I have always been very impressed with the plastic qualities of American Indian art. The Indians have the true painter's approach in their capacity to get hold of appropriate images, and in their understanding of what constitutes painterly subject-matter. Their colour is essentially Western, their vision has the basic universality of all real art. Some people find references to American Indian art and calligraphy in parts of my pictures. That wasn't intentional; probably [it] was the result of early memories and enthusiasm."

"Abstract painting is abstract. It confronts you. There was a reviewer a while back who wrote that my pictures didn't have any beginning or any end. He didn't mean it as a compliment, but it was. It was a fine compliment. Only he didn't know it."

"I've had a period of drawing on canvas in black – with some of my early images coming thru -, think the non-objectivists will find them disturbing – and the kids who think it simple to splash a 'Pollock' out."

"The thing that interests me is that today painters do not have to go to a subject-matter outside themselves. Modern painters work in a different way. They work from within."

"The important thing is that Clyff Still – you know his work? – and Rothko, and I – we've changed the nature of painting.. .I don't mean there aren't any other good painters. Bill [ Willem the Kooning ] is a good painter, but he's a 'French' painter [Pollock meant: a French-abstract style]. I told him so, the last time I saw him after his last show,. ..all those pictures in his last show start with an image. You can see it even though he's covered it up, or tried to.. ..Style – that's the French part of it. He has to cover it up with style.. [answering Seldon Rodman's question]"

"I don't care for 'Abstract expressionism'.. ..and it is certainly not 'non-objective', and not 'non-representational' either. I'm very representational some of the time, and a little all of the time. But when you're painting out of your consciousness, figures are bound to emerge. We're all of us influenced by Freud, I guess. I've been a Jungian for a long time.. .Painting is a state of being.. .Painting is self-discovery. Every good artist paints what he is."

"It seems to me that the modern painter cannot express his age, the airplane the atom bomb, the radio, in the old forms of Renaissance or of any past culture. Each age finds its own technique..."

"I think they [the public] should not look for, but look passively — and try to receive what the painting has to offer and not bring a subject matter or preconceived idea of what they are to be looking for ... and I think the unconsciousness drives do mean a lot in looking at paintings ... I think it should enjoyed just as music is enjoyed — after a while you may like it or you may not. But it doesn't seem to be too serious. I like some flowers, and others, other flowers I don't like. I think at least it gives — at least give it a chance."

"The modern artist is living in a mechanical age and we have a mechanical means of representing objects in nature such as the camera and photograph. The modern artist, it seems to me, is working and expressing an inner world – in other words – expressing the energy, the motion and the other inner forces ... the modern artist is working with space and time, and expressing his feelings rather than illustrating."

"Modern art to me is nothing more than the expression of contemporary aims of the age we're living in ... All cultures have had means and techniques of expressing their immediate aims – the Chinese, the Renaissance, all cultures. The thing that interests me is that today painters do not have to go to a subject matter outside of themselves. Most modern painters work from a different source, they work from within."

"Well, method is, it seems to me, a natural growth out of a need, and from a need the modern artist has found new ways of expressing the world about him. I happen to find ways that are different from the usual techniques, which seems a little strange at the moment, but I don't think there's anything very different about it. I paint on the floor and this isn't unusual – the Orientals did that."

"Most of the paint I use is a liquid, flowing kind of paint. The brushes I use are more a sticks rather than brushes – the brush doesn't touch the surface on the canvas, it's just above ... [so] I am able to be more free and to have greater freedom and move about the canvas, with greater ease."

"With experience it seems to be possible to control the flow of paint, to a great extent, and I don't use – I don't use the accident – 'cause I deny the accident ... it's quite different from working, say, from a still life where you set up objects and work directly from them. I do have a general notion of what I'm about and what the results will be. I approach painting in the same sense as one approaches drawing, that is, it's direct."

"I don't work from drawings and colour sketches into a final painting. Painting, I think, today – the more immediate, the more direct – the greater the possibilities of making a direct – of making a statement."

"Well, painting today certainly seems very vibrant, very alive, very exiting. Five or six of my contemporaries around New York are doing very vital work, and the direction that painting seems to be taken here – is – away from the easel – into some sort, some kind of wall, wall painting..."

"Naturally, the result is the thing [in painting] and it doesnvery vibrantt make much difference how the paint is put on as long as something has been said. Technique is just a means of arriving at a statement."

"I am nature."

"Each age finds its own technique.. .I mean, the strangeness will wear off and I think we will discover the deeper meanings in modern art."

"My concern is with the rhythms of nature.. .I work inside out, like nature."

"[visiting Pollock's studio]: You do not work from nature. This is no good, you will repeat yourself. You work by heart, not from nature. [Pollock answered: 'I am nature']"

"He [Pollock] has broken the ice."

"He [Pollock] just jumps in before he knows how to swim. [his reaction, when Morandi sees paintings of Pollock for the first time in his life, c. 1950]"

"Jackson Pollock's Scent is a heady specimen of what one worshiper calls his "personalized skywriting." More the product of brushwork than of Pollock's famed drip technique, it nevertheless aims to remind the observer of nothing except previous Pollocks, and quite succeeds in that modest design. All it says, in effect, is that Jack the Dripper, 44, still stands on his work."

"If you're a painter, you are not alone. There's no way to be alone. You think and you care and you're with all the people who care. You think you care and you're with all the people who care, including the young people who don't know they do yet. Tomlin in his late paintings knew this. Jackson always knew it: that if you meant it enough..."