Wayne Thiebaud (b. 1920)

"Most of the objects are fragments of actual experience. For instance I would really think of the bakery counter, of the way the counter was lit, where the pies were placed, but I wanted just a piece of the experience. From when I worked in restaurants, I can remember seeing rows of pies or a tin of pie with one piece out of it and one pie sitting beside it. Those little vedute in fragmented circumstances were always poetic to me."

(Thiebaud, quoted in S. Nash, "Unbalancing Acts: Wayne Thiebaud Reconsidered," Wayne Thiebaud: A Paintings Retrospective, exh. cat., San Francisco, p. 18)