Why I paint fish, I don't know.

Fish are lovely creatures. Colorful, friendly, available. These are the reasons I thought I was painting them -- because they are there. However, I find that I've been painting fish for many years. Not day after day, but recurrently. They have looked quite different at different periods of my life.

In any case, they come back. Again and again. They migrate into the imagery of what I paint and then they disappear down stream again. Homer was the first great artist to bring the Field and Stream idea of the fish into high form. One of his fishes struck me as so marvellous that I just stole it outright for my painting -- it's the surfacing fish of The Mink Pond. Mentioning it now, though, I realize that stealing fish is as much the recurrent theme for me as fish themselves. I stole Agenor from Bonnard's painting of him (Agenor was the name Bonnard gave to his fish) and made Agenor the central character of my painting Agenor's Friends.

Of course artists have always stolen forms and images from other artists. The finest invention merely adapts and strengthens ideas with proven currency. But what one steals -- now that has to reveal something. Rubens stole a bit of Laocoon for his Christ on the Cross and for his Prometheus and for a few other pictures as well. But me, all I stole were a few littles fishes!