When I work alone it can be like dabbling with a canvas. Maybe you paint over bits and it starts to form its own life and lead you off in a direction. It becomes an intuitive subconscious process.

All still lifes are actually paintings of the world on the sixth day of creation when God and the world were alone together without man!

I cannot live under pressures from patrons let alone paint.

I paint self-portraits because I am so often alone because I am the person I know best.

I grew up loving horses. I was relatively obsessed starting with my rocking horse at age 2 all the way through my painting and drawing phase.

There's also some element of coming of age during the Reagan administration which everybody has painted as some glorious time in America but I remember as being a very very dark time. There was apocalypse in the air the punk rock movement made sense.

Photography suits the temper of this age - of active bodies and minds. It is a perfect medium for one whose mind is teeming with ideas imagery for a prolific worker who would be slowed down by painting or sculpting for one who sees quickly and acts decisively accurately.

When superstition is allowed to perform the task of old age in dulling the human temperament we can say goodbye to all excellence in poetry in painting and in music.

New needs need new techniques. And the modern artists have found new ways and new means of making their statements... the modern painter cannot express this age the airplane the atom bomb the radio in the old forms of the Renaissance or of any other past culture.

Elizabeth Peyton the artist known for tiny dazzling portraits of radiant youth is now painting tiny dazzling portraits of radiant middle age.