I'm very much involved with Asian art and its theory and practice, mainly Chinese because that was quite sophisticated. I tend to look at that more than I look the Western.

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.

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.

Every time I open the paper, there's some symphony orchestra collapsing somewhere in the United States. What the hell is going on? And then you find out that the board members try to run these things as businesses.

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.

Western art has a certain relationship to nature.

Holding together a kind of tension. When you see a painting that's really good that's what it's doing.