The first thing I do is take Polaroids of the sitter - 10 or 12 color Polaroids and eight or 10 black-and whites.

When you come up in the art world, whatevers in the air, the issues of the moment, end up becoming part of the working method or modus operandi of how you think about doing a painting. And I came up at a time when-actually painting was dead when I came up. Sculpture sort of ruled.

I am going for a level of perfection that is only mine... Most of the pleasure is in getting the last little piece perfect.

Paintings can make you cry and it's just **colored dirt**.

I think I was driven to paint portraits to commit images of friends and family to memory. I have face blindness, and once a face is flattened out, I can remember it better.

Art saved my life in two ways. It made me feel special, because I could do things my friends couldn't, but it also gave me a way to demonstrate to my teacher that, despite the fact that I couldn't write a paper or do math, I was paying attention.

Inspiration is highly overrated. If you sit around and wait for the clouds to part, it's not liable to ever happen. More often than not, work is salvation.