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.

All I want to do is realism and follow the tradition of realism. And explore what realism should be now be after the ubiquity of smartphones. I'm trying to answer the question. I don't think I'll ever have the words, but hopefully I'll have a few images.

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

I'm interested in visual vocabulary, like Andy Warhol was interested in that vocabulary of advertisements and television and pop culture. I do a great deal of tropes. This past decade has seen a new term, "meme," which is exactly what I'm studying.

The landscape is one of the kinds that I think, at least this body of work is the least selfish of the stuff that I've done. It's all selfish. It is making images of things that I want to see, that turn me on, that make me happy, that satisfy me.

There's the people who have one of these cell phones in their pockets and don't have a clue how it's made. But I really want to understand.

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