I'm a professional artist, that's how I make my living. So I watch the market. There is, it seems to me, a lot of pure financial speculation, and I don't think that's terribly healthy. Though as long as the money is getting back to the artist, I think that's good. I'm very happy younger artists can make money faster than we could. And we were making it faster than a generation before us.

I smoke pot when I work. I take a couple of tokes before I start. It just loosens you up.

I've always worn a hat when I work. I think it also comes from a picture of Rothko I saw with a painter's hat on.

Western art has a certain relationship to nature.

I think abstraction is a very rich area. And it is upsetting that people seem to have some fear of it. I'm constantly making these statements about how you should just look at it and react to it on your own; just relax and let go.

In this kind of super-capitalistic society, everything is turned into money. And one of the great things about art is it isn't worth anything. It's absolutely free. It's going to get made no matter what.

I remember getting out of grad school and coming to New York and not wanting to get a teaching job because I wanted to work on my own, to develop my own ideas. There isn't that time now. Artists are exhibiting while they are still in grad school. There isn't that safety cushion.