As one gets older one sees many more paths that could be taken. Artists sense within their own work that kind of swelling of possibilities, which may seem a freedom or a confusion.
Jasper Johns

Do something, do something to that, and then do something to that.
Jasper Johns

Everyone is of course free to interpret the work in his own way. I think seeing a picture is one thing and interpreting it is another.
Jasper Johns

I am just trying to find a way to make pictures.
Jasper Johns

I don't know how to organise thoughts. I don't know how to have thoughts.
Jasper Johns

I have no ideas about what the paintings imply about the world. I don't think that's a painter's business. He just paints paintings without a conscious reason.
Jasper Johns

I never wish for critics.
Jasper Johns

I often find that having an idea in my head prevents me from doing something else. Working is therefore a way of getting rid of an idea.
Jasper Johns

I tend to like things that already exist.
Jasper Johns

I think a painting should include more experience than simply intended statement.
Jasper Johns


In the place where I was a child, there were no artists and there was no art, so I really didn't know what that meant. I think I thought it meant that I would be in a situation different than the one that I was in.
Jasper Johns

Intention involves such a small fragment of our consciousness and of our mind and of our life.
Jasper Johns

Most of the power of painting comes through the manipulation of space... but I don't understand that.
Jasper Johns

One likes to think that one anticipates changes in the spaces we inhabit, and our ideas about space.
Jasper Johns

One works without thinking how to work.
Jasper Johns

Sometimes I see it and then paint it. Other times I paint it and then see it. Both are impure situations, and I prefer neither.
Jasper Johns

The thing is, if you believe in the unconscious - and I do - there's room for all kinds of possibilities that I don't know how you prove one way or another.
Jasper Johns

To be an artist you have to give up everything, including the desire to be a good artist.
Jasper Johns

Whatever I do seems artificial and false, to me.
Jasper Johns

When something is new to us, we treat it as an experience. We feel that our senses are awake and clear. We are alive.
Jasper Johns