[Watercolour] is made with complete absence of physical effort. In fact, the materiality of it is so fragile, that you’re working with the light of the paper shining through the pigment. It’s almost not there. It’s the point before matter becomes air. Because that’s what water is … water can dissolve into air.

Sean Scully, interview with R. Eric Davis, ‘Sean Scully’s preoccupations’, On Paper, vol. 2, no. 6, July–August 1998, pp. 24–29 (p. 24).