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.

For me becoming a painter was an Everest, in terms of what I thought a painter was. There are many roads to becoming an artist. For me it wasn't art school. I didn't have that go to art school and then get a gallery. It's more like, how deep is your inner library to cull from. It's certainly not about technical prowess, just about depth of investigation. It takes time. I had 15 years of painting under my belt before my first New York show. I was glad to have that. It's a good thing to spend your twenties getting your craft.

All my siblings became artists. One's a novelist, my brother is a painter, my sister was a costume designer.

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

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.

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.

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.