The reason people are so moved by art and why artists tend to take it all so seriously is that if they are real and true they come to the painting with everything they know and feel and live, and all the things they don't know, and some of the things they hope, and they are honest about them all and put them on the canvas. What can be more serious?

Coming to an ocean near you

Coming to a blue ocean near you

An artist should create beautiful things, but should put nothing of his own life into them.

I don't believe in art. I believe in artists.

First, there are so many artists. Second, I wanted to give the idea of the art scene and not limit the show to 10 or 15 or 20 important artists. I wanted to restitute something of the life of the scene. Another problem was that I had to decide which artists I could consider. Most are not really from L.A.; they arrived as students or teachers and stayed. Others were born in Los Angeles, but left early. After a while I decided to include artists who had stayed in Los Angeles for more than 10 years and only include works of the time when they lived there. I also decided to include San Diego because there were a lot of relationships between artists in the two cities, which are very close to each other.