Study for Nude Aquatint

“I always had a finished study, a deliberate subject choice. I felt a strong obligation, in a sense, to be the next in line, or to take up the next position in the whole progression…[from] Matisse [to the] present. I liked the evolution of representational painting, just as it was going. I wanted to be a next step in that [continuum]”

T. Wesselmann quoted in C. Glenn, Tom Wesselmann: The Intimate Images, University Art Museum, Long Beach, 2002, p. 4.