The Red Bathrobe

What you do in life is to constantly find equivalents for feelings. We are constantly finding and using expressions, jokes, puns, images, innuendos, insults, gestures, music, tone, timbre, touch, rhythm, inflection, frames within frames, halls of mirrors, sweet and rough things, etc. All of it. This is what I apply to the work. It’s not programmatic at all. The way to know what to do in a painting is the same as to know what to say to someone on the telephone.
—David Salle