#som

When something is new to us, we treat it as an experience. We feel that our senses are awake and clear. We are alive. ↗

— Jasper Johns

#awake #clear #experience #feel #new

At first I had some idea that the absence of color made the work more physical. Early on I was very involved with the notion of the painting as an object and tended to attack that idea from different directions. ↗

— Jasper Johns

#attack #color #different #different directions #directions

I often find that having an idea in my head prevents me from doing something else. Working is therefore a way of getting rid of an idea. ↗

— Jasper Johns

#else #find #getting #having #head

Do something, do something to that, and then do something to that. ↗

— Jasper Johns

#then

My experience of life is that it's very fragmented; certain kinds of things happen, and in another place, a different kind of thing occurs. I would like my work to have some vivid indication of those differences. ↗

— Jasper Johns

#certain #certain kinds #differences #different #different kind

Sometime during the mid-50s I said, 'I am an artist.' Before that, for many years, I had said, 'I'm going to be an artist.' Then I went through a change of mind and a change of heart. What made 'going to be an artist' into 'being an artist', was, in part, a spiritual change. ↗

— Jasper Johns

#artist #before #being #change #during

Sometimes I see it and then paint it. Other times I paint it and then see it. Both are impure situations, and I prefer neither. ↗

— Jasper Johns

#i #i see #impure #neither #other

The only logical thing I can think of is that I knew there were such things as artists, and I knew there were none where I lived. So I knew that to be an artist you had to be somewhere else. And I very much wanted to be somewhere else. ↗

— Jasper Johns

#artists #else #had #i #i can

This image of wanting to be an artist - that I would in some way become an artist -was very strong. I knew for a long, long time that that's what I would be. But nothing I ever did seemed to bring me any nearer to the condition of being an artist. And I didn't know how to do it. ↗

— Jasper Johns

#artist #become #being #bring #condition

To do a drawing for a painting most often means doing something very sketchy and schematic and then later making it polished. ↗

— Jasper Johns

#drawing #later #making #means #most