Margaret Keane

"It was the eyes that did it. [timid giggle] I liked the way he painted eyes and he liked mine."

"M, you see, is four, and D is four too, and H is eight, and four and four and eight are sixteen, which is made up of one and six, which make seven—my number."

"He can't paint eyes. He couldn't learn to paint at all."

"I had just announced for the first time publicly on a radio show in San Francisco that I had done all the Keane paintings and not my ex-husband. And this, um, Bill Flang of the San Francisco Examiner thought that Walter and I should appear in Union Square and have a paint-off to decide who had done the paintings, since I was—said that I had done them. So, he arranged it, and LIFE magazine as there and all the different newspapers and t.v. stations and they, uh—some of them in the audience played "High Noon"—[laughs] And, of course, Walter didn't show up."

"I'd have to lock the door of the paint room. He wouldn't allow anyone in. I was like a prisoner."

"Gradually it dawned on me that I was painting my own inner emotions. Those children were asking: "Why are we here? What is life all about? Why is there sadness and injustice?" All those deep questions. Those children were sad because they didn't have the answers. They were searching."

"A lot of art today doesn't convey much hope, and I hope mine does. I try to paint what I think the future holds and my innermost feelings about God's promise for the future."

"The older I get, the brighter colours I live. But in the past, they were dark, dingy, sad colours."

"He'd threatened me so many times. I thought he was so crazy he could hire a hit man to come get me anytime."

"Walter was extremely charming. He could charm anybody, especially women."

"Children do have big eyes. When I'm doing a portrait, the eyes are the most expressive part of the face. And they just got bigger and bigger and bigger."

"I lost all respect for him and myself, and lived in a nightmare."

"I still paint sad children, because there's sadness in the world, but they have hope, and I have hope."

"I finally got to the point where I decided I don't care if it's good art or bad art, it's what I do. I enjoy doing it, and people like it."

"His art is in heroic bad taste. It's incredibly vulgar, it's weird, but it's still gorgeous. Bad-taste entertainment is the best entertainment. What I really love about Keane is that he is so commercial."

"And Margaret, uh, has done a lot of experimenting in her work. I think, probably, no artist has experimented the way Margaret has."

"Margaret is probably the greatest woman painter alive."

"I think what Keane has done is just terrific. It has to be good. If it were bad, so many people wouldn't like it."

"But what I like most about Keane, myself, is that he's mass-produced, like a factory."