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

I underwent a whole process of slowly letting go of idiosyncrasies and habits and embellishments and everything extraneous to the essentials that I'm unwilling to let go of. I never dreamed that I would be making black-and-white paintings with so little embellishment. But it's been liberating in many ways to let go of that and yet see what I did want to retain.

I was never exposed to art school. I grew up in an artist's studio. I was exposed a lot of studio time between of my father and a great painter I studied with in Barcelona. That was my art school, as Europe was.

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.

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

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

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