When you're using a long brush, you have your arm at full length. Basically, it exaggerates the movement of your body. But I always start far away and end up really close.

I'm much more concerned about what artists think. But as you get older you tend to get much more isolated; you're not out in the bar, having long drunken arguments on the benefits of your work vs. someone else's. It's hard to know how people are looking at it, and you don't get much feedback. The written critical stuff seems to be the feedback, but that's hard to interpret.

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

Abstraction has always been around, since the drawings in the caves. It exists in all cultures all over the world. I thought for a while that it was going to be the major movement. But people always drift back to realism. I guess there is a certain security in that.

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 respect all artists, just some more than the others. Because it's something that really needs to be done.

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.