Tammy Garcia

"I was about sixteen years old when I actually sold my first piece. And it was eight years ago when I started bronze, making sculptures to be bronzed. And that was really fun.

"That allowed me a way to express, I guess, my artistic views and allowed me to create forms that I couldn't make with the water-based clay. So it really opened the doors to new sizes and shapes, as well as color..."

Russian Art

"The Dance by Matisse, one of the most famous paintings in the world, in the UK for the first time. It's just one of dozens of masterpieces from Russian state collections which make up the "From Russia" exhibition at London's Royal Academy of Arts.

With works from Picasso, Rousseau and Gauguin, it's little surprise that hundreds of thousands of people are expected to visit this exhibition. What might be surprising is that it didn't geet the go-ahead until 2 weeks ago...."

Georgia O'Keeffe

Georgia O'Keeffe: "When I got to New Mexico, that was mine. As soon as I saw it, that was my country. I'd never seen anything like it before but it fitted to me exactly. It's something that's in the air. It's different. The sky is different. The stars are different. The wind is different. I shouldn't say too much about this, 'cause other people may get interested and I don't want them interested.

"I don't go out like that now, but I used to get right up in the morning and start out and stay out all day. I'd start off around seven and not get back until around five.

"Hot? Well, of course it was hot. It was terribly hot. And in the afternoon at about four o'clock, the bees would try to get in the car, so you'd have to close the windows. Of course it was hot.

"But a Model-A was wonderful. You could take the back seat out. I could sit on the driver's seat when I turned it around and I could work on the back seat. The windows were large enough that it was very good and I could use a great big canvas..."

Roxanne Swentzell

"I tell a story because my art comes from me being a little child and not being able to speak...

When my mother was making pottery, I would take the clay and I started making these figures that were basically me, trying to show how I felt. Then I would show the little figurine to my mother. And that's how she would know how I felt.

"I found out really early that I could communicate things through sculpting. It wasn't like 'I'm making art' or 'I'm going to make a drawing'. It was pure communication.

"I love my clay that I buy, from a box. And it saves me a lot of time processing it. I think it's important to experience digging clay and mixing your own clay and I grew up doing that. My mother used to dig her own clay..."