I'm not such an artist type that I can't handle the real world. I read the financial pages, because most people don't talk about art.

I'm not particularly interested in painting, per se. I'm interested in a painting that has that mysterious life to it. Anything that doesn't partake of that magic is halfway dead - it returns to its physical elements, it's just paint and canvas.

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.

If you come every day or every month to my studio, you won't see that much change, but if you come once a year, you'll see big new categories opened up.

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

Everyone accepts the abstraction of Bach. My work aspires to the same kind of abstraction, which is so engaging that you're distracted from asking about what it means. So many paintings have hidden meanings or need wall texts, but my work is not in that category. Once it's in the viewer's eyes my job will be judged on whether or not it is engaging and pulls you in to a kind of intelligence or poetic something going on there that makes it sustainable to look at.

The world of painting has nothing to do with the art world.