LeRoy Neiman

I've met and sketched most of the great athletes from the past five decades and their movement, grace and energy have kept me captivated over the years. That's what the ancient Greeks first saw and that's what caught my interest.

I always stayed in tune with my own ambitions and attitudes and I'm still my intractable old self, for better or worse.

When I paint, I seriously consider the public presence of a person - the surface facade. I am less concerned with how people look when they wake up or how they act at home. A person's public presence reflects his own efforts at image development.

I don't know if I'm an impressionist or an expressionist. You can call me an American first... I've been labeled doing neimanism, so that's what it is, I guess.

Boxing is my real passion. I can go to ballet, theatre, movies, or other sporting events... and nothing is like the fights to me. I'm excited by the visual beauty of it. A boxer can look so spectacular by doing a good job.

You know what I like about San Francisco? The women are beautiful, fashionable and smart. San Francisco is one of the only cities I like to visit. I love New York and Chicago - I studied there, and L.A. has the same people as New York.

The people who love my paintings, that respond to them the most, they're spectators, they're not viewers.

I love the passion you go through while you're creating.

It has been difficult to hold onto many paintings but I have retained a few. Possibly the current favorite is titled 'Big Band' completed in 2005. It measures 13 feet x 9 feet. It has 18 nearly life size recognizable portraits of the biggest jazz stars that I knew and saw perform in the 1950s, '60s, '70s, '80s and includes Wynton Marsalis.

It's a nice feeling to go out in the world and look for excellence - the best in man. My subject is very valid. It's about people, and about life.

It's been fun. I've had a lucky life. Art has made me pull the best out of myself.

Playboy' made the good life a reality for me and made it the subject matter of my paintings - not affluence and luxury as such, but joie de vivre itself.