Margaret Keane

Stand up for your rights and be brave, and don't be intimidated. Read your Bible. That's really given me strength, and it will give you strength. Pray, and use God's name, Jehovah. And never tell a lie, ever.

I didn't really start appreciating Picasso until a few years back. I didn't like him at all. But now I can see this world is crazy.

I didn't want people to know that I was an artist. I was ashamed. I thought artists were weird, crazy people, you know. So I always kind of hid the fact that I was an artist.

People either hate my paintings or they love them. There does not seem to be much middle ground.

The old, sad art colors are gone. Now I paint bright colors. I paint paintings which are happy, where children are laughing and playing with animals. I paint paradise on Earth. I still paint sadness sometimes, but there is sadness in the world, too.

In the beginning, I started doing portraits of children, and of course, children have large eyes. For some reason, they just started getting bigger and bigger. Then, when I started painting imaginary children rather than real ones, they became bigger still.

I was always drawing eyes, even as a child. Eyes fascinated me.