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

Every painting I've ever done has like 100 paintings under it.

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.

A lot of what I do in my work is taking a thing and either washing it off, scraping it, covering it, scraping it and then washing it, turning it upside down. Making it somehow blind.

I'm in this process of trying to create a free space. Like an open field, where figure and ground are in very ambivalent, complex relationships. On top of that, I also wanted to see if I could try to blurt something out, or make something completely immediate, that ends up fitting perfectly.

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.

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.