Any expression of quality is the result of relationship between two opposite worlds, between two levels of reality. A direction is followed. And, as the years go on, it deepens or changes. It is in accordance with what one wishes to express that the technique also changes. Even from one painting to another, something may need to be enlivened again. The sensitivity is deepening, the feeling is becoming, so to say, more exact, and the technique needs to correspond, to be refined, attuned, in the same way a musical instrument needs to be attuned in accord with what is going to be played. What remains recognizable from one piece of work to another represents what is essential in the artist; it is his signature, his own voice.
There is another aspect I would like to touch upon. When I see that the painting is not going to go any further, there is a split. What I did does not belong to me any more; it is no longer my child. It becomes like a message sealed in a bottle thrown into the sea. Perhaps someday someone will find it and will read the message. But for me it already belongs to the past. A kind of death has taken place which frees me from identification with my own work.
-- Paul Reynard
