This image of wanting to be an artist - that I would in some way become an artist -was very strong. I knew for a long, long time that that's what I would be. But nothing I ever did seemed to bring me any nearer to the condition of being an artist. And I didn't know how to do it.

Jasper Johns

Time Art Age

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

Jasper Johns

Good Art You

Take an object. Do something to it. Do something else to it.

Jasper Johns

Thing Thin Take

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

Jasper Johns

Thing Thin Then

I was raised in South Carolina; I wasn't aware of any art in South Carolina. There was a minor museum in Charleston, which had nothing of interest in it. It showed local artists, paintings of birds.

Jasper Johns

War Car Art

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

Time Times Tim

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.

Jasper Johns

Art Where Were

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

Jasper Johns

Yin Way Us

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

Work Freedom Art

I am not strong on perfection.

Jasper Johns

Art T Strong

What you might consider a bad work can be of extreme interest to an artist in ways which are not about its being a good or bad.

Jasper Johns

Work Good Art

There was very little art in my childhood. I was raised in South Carolina; I wasn't aware of any art in South Carolina. There was a minor museum in Charleston, which had nothing of interest in it. It showed local artists, paintings of birds.

Jasper Johns

War Car Art

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

Work Working Way

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

Business World Without

One works without thinking how to work.

Jasper Johns

Work Works Without

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

Jasper Johns

Space Change Think

Whatever I do seems artificial and false, to me.

Jasper Johns

Art Whatever T

The only logical thing I can think of is that I knew there were such things as artists, and I knew there were none where I lived. So I knew that to be an artist you had to be somewhere else. And I very much wanted to be somewhere else.

Jasper Johns

Art You Where

I tend to like things that already exist.

Jasper Johns

Things Thing Thin

At first I had some idea that the absence of color made the work more physical. Early on I was very involved with the notion of the painting as an object and tended to attack that idea from different directions.

Jasper Johns

Work Wit Very

I don't want my work to be an exposure of my feelings.

Jasper Johns

Work Want T

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

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

Jasper Johns

I never wish for critics.

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

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

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

My experience of life is that it's very fragmented; certain kinds of things happen, and in another place, a different kind of thing occurs. I would like my work to have some vivid indication of those differences.

Jasper Johns

I love drawings, so I've always enjoyed making drawings that exist on their own.

Jasper Johns

To do a drawing for a painting most often means doing something very sketchy and schematic and then later making it polished.

Jasper Johns

Sometime during the mid-50s I said, 'I am an artist.' Before that, for many years, I had said, 'I'm going to be an artist.' Then I went through a change of mind and a change of heart. What made 'going to be an artist' into 'being an artist', was, in part, a spiritual change.

Jasper Johns

One wants one's work to be the world, but of course it's never the world. The work is in the world; it never contains the whole thing.

Jasper Johns

This image of wanting to be an artist - that I would in some way become an artist -was very strong. I knew for a long, long time that that's what I would be. But nothing I ever did seemed to bring me any nearer to the condition of being an artist. And I didn't know how to do it.

Jasper Johns

I decided that if my work contained what I could identify as a likeness to other work, I would remove it.'

Jasper Johns

I'm not sure what 'coming out right' means. It often means that what you do holds a kind of energy that you wouldn't just put there, that comes about through grace of some sort.

Jasper Johns

I wish there were more humor in my work than I see in it.

Jasper Johns

To me, self-description is a calamity.

Jasper Johns