‘When I first came to New York I did a lot of construction work, wall building. There’s something extremely beautiful about making divisions in walls and covering up the wooden frame and leaving little windows and things. The most difficult, tricky part is the fastidious sheet-rocking, the taping and the finishing. Of course, privately I was trying to make it fun for myself, so I was composing; after all, I’m an artist.’

Sean Scully, ‘‘Piecing things together’: a conversation between Sean Scully
and Joseph Masheck’, Sean Scully: Paintings 1985–1986 (exhibition
catalogue), New York: David McKee Gallery, 1986, n.p.