Joseph Plaskett quotes:

Art is a celebration of life, intended by the artist to put the spectator in touch with the divine.

I don't want to always be doing the same old thing.

Each painting is a plunge into the unknown.

Cubism came about because, in the process of analyzing form, something that lay in the form, a plane, could be lifted out to float on its own...

Impressionism came about because it suddenly became apparent that pure colours mix in the eye in a more dazzling way than they have ever been mixed in paint.

There is my love... of the young artists of my country who can carry on the dreams and ideals into the future.

My zest for exhibition has over a long career become increasingly a mania. The ecstasy I feel as I survey work I have done I want to share with the world - not the whole world which couldn't care less, but my private world, which is my country, Canada.

The art of painting is entering a new golden age. It is in no danger of becoming obsolete.

No artist, if he has original talent, can paint like another.

All that is happening in art is part of a process of exploration and discovery. I hope to live for a few more years so that I can catch glimpses of the oncoming future.

The art that I make and that I see others make confirms the miracle of being alive. Almost every day I live in a state of exaltation. The art of painting is to me sacred. It is central to all the other visual arts. This art is in a constant state of renewal.

Sometimes, at a certain point, the painting seems to have painted itself without my help - what I have called the 'eureka' moment when a sudden daring intervention has worked a miracle.

All paintings start with concept, which is another word for image or imagination. The mistake is to isolate the concept as if the idea did not need to be given permanent form.

An aged painter cannot help but accept the fact that his work belongs in the past. Younger painters have leaped into the phenomenon called contemporary, where it would be foolish of me to try to enter. But I can claim my own phenomenon...

I had always made pictures as I thought I saw the world, focusing on what lay in front, but this is not how one sees the world. It only frames the centre and cuts off the lateral vision, which lies unfocused. Now I found that I could turn my eye to the adjacent field of vision, seeing another focus, an extension which I added to the original. Instead of stopping at two focuses, I looked further to the side, adding another and yet another...