When you're not smoking anymore, you don't have to carry around a pack of cigarettes, a lighter - all this paraphernalia. So you're liberated in a certain sense. It's the same with drinking.

I love the healthy exchange of information.

A painting, you know, it's all dirty material. But it's about transformation. Taking that earth, that heavy earthen kind of thing, turning it into air and light.

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.

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.

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.