It's more this instinct to get in trouble, and then get myself out of trouble. That's what painting is for me.

I make paintings really slowly because I change them and change them and change them and change them and change them. I don't really know how to not do that. I'm not very free in a way. Even though it looks free. But it's not.

At some point, I get a weird feeling, and that's when I know it's done. I probably ruin a lot of really perfectly fine things. So part of working on paper, and trying to work really fast, is to see if I can expand the area of not being driven by taste. Not saying, "This looks good, I'll stop."

The works have to look like they're confident. But they also have to look sort of troubled. It's this weird thing: "Does that look confident and troubled?" It's a bit like difficult poetry.

I want to expand the question of when something is done. I want to vex the ending. I want to mess around with that. I like the idea that if you make a work that has no clear ending, then you must play with the ending. Because if you don't, you're not highlighting the weird, lovely openness of abstraction.

Being bad. Discomfort with your body. Bad self image. All those things turn you into an artist. The same things that keep you from being in a proper marriage.

I've never read a book on shape. I've read books on gesture; I've read tons of books on color, surface, field, ground, representation, abstraction. But I've never read a book on what a shape is.