I like colour because you can’t control it the way you can form. It’s kind of like riding a spirited horse … The only way I can work with it is as a metaphor for spirit.

Sean Scully, cited in Amy Lighthill, ‘Portrait of the artist as lightning rod’, Sean Scully (exhibition catalogue), Pittsburgh: Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute, 1985, pp. 6–16 (p. 6).