"I guess I have no motivation to make an abstract painting, even if they sometimes read as abstract. I think, with abstraction, it's easy to fall into a sort of pastiche."

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One of the weaknesses of much abstract painting is the attempt to substitute the inventions of the intellect for a pristine imaginative conception. The inner life of a human being is a vast and varied realm and does not concern itself alone with stimulating arrangements of color, form and design. The term 'life' as used in art is something not to be held in contempt, for it applies all of its existence, and the province of art is to react to it and not to shun it. Painting will have to deal more fully and less obliquely with life and nature's phenomena before it can again be great.

— Edward Hopper