[The] pieces are generally painted separately. And sometimes they’re painted in different rooms. And sometimes they’re painted with tremendously long periods between them. So I’m not thinking about the whole, when I’m painting the pieces. I’m thinking about the pieces, what they are. And when you paint at different times, you feel differently, you are different; so that the spirit in the panels, the spirit in the pieces is different from part to part. So the paintings become emotionally dimensional. That’s my intention.

Sean Scully, interview with Hans-Michael Herzog, ‘The beauty of the real’,
Sean Scully (exhibition catalogue), Milan: Charta, 1996, pp. 55–131 (p. 77).