Robert Rauschenberg — American Artist born on October 22, 1925, died on May 12, 2008

Robert Rauschenberg was an American painter and graphic artist whose early works anticipated the pop art movement. Rauschenberg is well known for his "Combines" of the 1950s, in which non-traditional materials and objects were employed in innovative combinations. Rauschenberg was both a painter and a sculptor and the Combines are a combination of both, but he also worked with photography, printmaking, papermaking, and performance. He was awarded the National Medal of Arts in 1993. He became the recipient of the Leonardo da Vinci World Award of Arts in 1995 in recognition of his more than 40 years of fruitful artmaking... (wikipedia)

An empty canvas is full.
You begin with the possibilities of the material.
The artist's job is to be a witness to his time in history.
If you don't have trouble paying the rent, you have trouble doing something else; one needs just a certain amount of trouble.
And I think a painting has such a limited life anyway.