I'm poor white trash from the state of Washington.

Painting is the most magical of mediums. The transcendence is truly amazing to me every time I go to a museum and I see how somebody figured another way to rub colored dirt on a flat surface and make space where there is no space or make you think of a life experience.

Any innovation that is evident in my paintings is a direct result of something that happened in the course of making a print.

A face is a road map of someone's life. Without any need to amplify that or draw attention to it, there's a great deal that's communicated about who this person is and what their life experiences have been.

Far more interesting than problem solving is problem creation.

I have a great deal of difficulty recognizing faces, especially if I haven't - if I've just met somebody, it's hopeless.

Neurologically, I'm a quadriplegic, so virtually everything about my work has been driven by my learning disabilities, which are quite severe, and my lack of facial recognition, which I'm sure is what drove me to paint portraits in the first place.