My 20s were spent in a room, alone, mixing paints and figuring it all out.

I think I was very lucky to have grown up with an artist's studio in the house. It was a kind of life that was possible. Yeah, it made it kind of harder because the standards were higher, but there was no pressure.

Most days, I practice piano in the mornings and I spend the rest of the day painting.

My forms are not abstractions of things in the real world. They're also not symbols. I would say that my job is to invent these forms and to put them together in a way that keeps your interest, to give the forms a quirky identity so you can engage with them, so you realize there's an inner intelligence or logic.

It's not until the very last phase that you know how good the works are going to be.

Most people draw from the mind, not the eye. They draw the idea of a table or a face, not what's in front of them. We don't actually see the line of the jaw as a line and we don't see an eye as a perfectly outlined almond shape.

My 20s were spent in a room, alone, mixing paints and figuring it all out.