Genius is a word that should be reserved for the Greeks.

What notion do humans have that make the gods laugh out loud? Self-expression.

Neoclassicism is what the Greeks did after Homer.

What did the gods do to control the hubris of mankind? They allowed Greek painting to be lost.

Beauty is form contemplated without desire.

Art is amoral only if beauty has no truth.

Self-consciousness is the cul-de-sac of art. The self is like a fingerprint. The artist, trying to express his self is on a fool's errand; a work of art is by its nature a unique expression.

Originality is not achieved by striving for individuality but for perfection.

It is not wrong to look for glory in art. Great art is often made by artists with a hunger for fame, wealth or glory. Bad art is made for the same reason.

An artist is someone with intense materialist feelings.

It is in brush-strokes that we converse with the old masters.

Postmodernism is only possible if we disinherit the Greeks.

Art is a prejudice towards beauty. Try to choose the difficult path of beauty over the easy one of giving offence. To create is for the artist; to shock is for the adolescent.

It is only by going to art school that one can be sure of ending up self-taught.

The multitudes

So many schools
So many institutions
Such a multitude of artists
Generations of peasants stolen from the land
So much cannon fodder gone to waste.

Anthropomorphism is the heart of creation.

Do not confuse emotion with spirituality in art. Emotion is to spirituality what sex is to love.

Composition is the god within painting.

God made only one rule concerning truth- it is simple.

Nietzsche and Freud are heroes of individuality whose work should be subject to the scrutiny of art not of reason.

In considering the life of Jesus, why do so many dwell on the humanity of Judas?

The Jews were right. If Jesus was not who he claimed to be, then he was the greatest blasphemer- 'before Abraham was I am' -no human being ever had such arrogance.

The Beatitudes

Blessed be the poor at art
For they shall be recognised

Blessed be the critic
For he shall go to the father of lies

Blessed be the patron
For he has found mammon

Blessed be they who hunger and thirst
For self-advertisement sake
For theirs is the kingdom of the earth.

Blessed be they who seek after truth
For they are pure fools.

The Romans had bread and circuses- we have art therapy.

What is an aesthetic oxymoron? An installation artist

An academic is someone who explains a joke.

Those that say that there are no absolutes are either fools or philosophers.

Abstract painting is interior decoration within a rectangle.

Modern criticism reaches its apogee when explaining that banal juxtaposed objects represent an advance in aesthetics and that unintentional mediocrity is an ironic social comment.

The Painters Prayer

From the tyranny of fashion
From the cutting edge
Lord save us

From social irony
From artist's statements
Lord spare us

From female artists investigating their bodies
Lord grant them a happy solitude of many pregnancies

From a thousand post graduate theses on aesthetics
Lord castrate them without anesthetic

From art schools and academies
From the legions of installationists
On a treadmill ever fatuous
Christ, you have suffered enough
Boil them in extreme unction

From the sycophants and explainers
The philosopher-critics and purveyors of novelty
Lord do not listen to the revisionists, let the fires of hell be real
Open the bowels of the earth and keep their anuses warm
With hot pokers over many centuries

Only grant this to me O lord
And I will endeavor to follow the truth.

Art is an imitative process: look to the masters of painting…Velasquez, Vermeer, Rembrandt and to that painter, of whom his equals, only matched aspects of his work…Titian. Let history give you a master.

Philosophy, in failing to confront the follies of art, in acquiescing and cowering like a critic before the giant of fashion, has failed art. The painter therefore should therefore ponder the following definitions: Philosophy- an arrangement of words in a pattern. Aesthetics - an arrangement of words in a pattern that may or may not be pleasing.

Do not believe in the justice of this world and that you will be rewarded if you give everything to your art- look at the Greeks; our museums are littered with their anonymous masterpieces.

Artistic immortality is a well-tended grave.

Great artists are not ahead of their time They have merely assimilated the past.

The artist being ahead of his time is such a superficial notion. Today's artist looks over his shoulder fearful of being out of fashion, of being dated even by a few years.
Yet the great art of the Egyptians varied little over 3000 years. A Greek sculptor could test his work against the masters of 500 years previous. The Renaissance looked back over 1500 years to try to emulate the greats. We, who are so much closer in time to the Renaissance- the great period of painting in our era- yet who among us looks to them now.
How craven and enslaved are our artists to a false idea of progress, or of originality, which they confuse with novelty. How ironic that painting, so noted for its timeless quality should now be corrupted by such passing fancies. Is it not strange that the great visual imagery of painting should degenerate into the pleasantries of colour arrangements or the intellectual feebleness of installation art? The flesh is unwilling and the spirit is dead.

Art is true only when it is necessary.