Quotes from Fred Tomaselli

The small amount of people that control the discourse around painting - I thought that the whole museum world was just a bunch of phonies, and I didn't really want to have anything to do with it. I guess I did installations, in a funny way, because they couldn't be commodified.

Art is really about perception, and mine have been changed through visiting other realities.

I don't know if I'm a populist artist, but I do try to maintain a spirit of generosity.

I like the idea of multidisciplinary conversations, so in that spirit, I try and make a contribution from the art world into the music world.

There are aspects of Asian culture in my work, but it's really rooted in an American experience - transcendentalism, '60s counterculture, punk rock.

I don't embrace irony, but I do think it's a pre-existing condition; we manage it as best we can.

I'm actually pretty smart when you get to know me.

A lot of people dont think of my work as being all that funny, but I think its hilarious!

Ive come to believe in the primacy of form - the notion of art seducing you through your senses, through your eyeballs.

I worked my way through art school as an auto mechanic, doing various stuff including sanding bodywork and using Bondo filler.

I wouldn't know any other way to live except to be an artist. I'm not very good at anything else.

I kind of have a Victorian sensibility - I don't understand stuff until I can classify it and name it.