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've been playing piano my whole life but I'd never tried to understand how compositions are made really. Try to imagine if you'd loved paintings your whole life but had never painted one. My aspiration now is just to understand. I don't have professional pretensions. I've learned so much. So many things I've been doing in the visual, two-dimensional painting world parallel many of the inner working of music - how intervals resolve into each other, harmonic rhythm, tonal things - there's a whole vocabulary that overlaps. Sometimes people see pianos in my works - that I never think.

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

So many paintings have hidden meanings or need wall texts, but my work is not in that category.

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.

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.

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