It's been so much a part of my life the thinking that I go through is crucial. I found that if I don't paint for around a week, I get practically suicidal. It took a long time to figure out why I had these mood swings, and I finally figured out it's because I haven't painted.

I don't try to force-feed it or put any things on the images until I'm making a painting. It's not photorealism. Photorealism's goal is to reproduce a photograph. The best photorealism can't beat a printer, and I have a really nice printer. I don't want to go blind doing what a printer can do.

I read that prior to the advent of color TV, most people dreamed in black and white.

Fondness for people can be terrifying, because it's intangible and it can disappear, or it can be taken away, or you can say the wrong thing. A million things, so it's so uncomfortable. So when you suddenly become aware of it because they don't call you or something for half an hour or whatever, you lose it.

Photorealism says: to fool your eye. That isn't what I've been interested in doing.

I wanted to finally feel better about understanding. I painted my wife because I wanted to understand her. I can talk to her, but I didn't understand why I was so compelled.

The advent of the digital age and the immediacy and convenience of digital video and photography allows people to become an integral part of the feedback loop which actively shapes the content we are fed.