“My concentration was not real good. It was mostly a question of just staying in the studio and simply not going out. Whether I did anything or didn’t do anything, whether I was able to work or not, I simply would not let myself leave. But after a while, if you don’t let yourself leave, then everything else begins to leave, that is, all your other reasons or ambitions in being there; and if you’re very fortunate, you might then reach a point of being completely alone in an intimate dialogue with yourself as acted out in the realm of the painting.”

-Robert Irwin, quoted in Seeing is Forgetting the Name the the Thing One Sees: A Life of Contemporary Artist Robert Irwin, by Lawrence Weschler