I try not to bring in anything I don't love looking at. It's about restaint ... There is something about an unfinished quality that leaves within you that sense of possibility.

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

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.

This morning I got up early and I was glazing the paintings and they just looked so beautiful. I had a private moment of "yeah, I'm behind this." Which is all that matters as an artist, to believe in what you're doing. It sounds like an obvious thing but it takes a lot of work.

I had a visit from an artist friend who basically said, "Your paintings are wonderful. Now stop." It did resonate with me. It hit on the percolating need for change that was already there. I got a little push. I did a group of the paintings early on that were among the best. It was sort of beginner's luck with these.

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. If you stop asking what they mean, or what they remind you of, and just look at them for 29 seconds, you find that they want to explain themselves and show you how much every tiniest detail is related to the whole.

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