Donald Baechler

I'm drawn to silhouettes because of their emblematic rather than their illustrational quality. I see them as shapes, allowing an image to become an abstraction and for pure painting to take place.

I miss Dia. In the early '80s I was a guard at one of Dia's facilities in SoHo, and I'm sad that they closed their Chelsea space.

I'll get boxes full of books and objects from perfect strangers in the oddest places. Teachers will send me students' drawings, etc. It's hard to sift through it all.

In the same way I accumulate objects, I also accumulate images, and I find them arranging themselves into categories, too. And some images insist on being painted; others don't.