I once read an article on Aztec poetry, which is very repetitive, like reggae. It talked about the poetry as being an art of panic, like a way of painting out space, empty space … Getting rid of emptiness, making everything full-up; in other words, a compulsive desire to make life full-up because you know that you’re not going to be here always.

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