I had something I was trying to say and sometimes the message is an easy transmission and sometimes it's a difficult one but I love the power of saying it so I'm gonna do it whether it's hard or easy.

When they're looking at my work, they're looking at a painting and they're able to accept it better because it is also a quilt.

You can't sit around and wait for somebody to say who you are. You need to write it and paint it and do it

I always knew I wanted to be somebody. I think that's where it begins. People decide, "I want to be somebody. I want to make a contribution. I want to leave my mark here." Then different factors contribute to how you will do that.

I had this idea that I wanted to do this mixture of visions of African American women and visions of African American men. And call it 'The Men' and call it 'The Women' and show different faces of these two people.

Creativity helps us realize that we don't have to understand everything. We can enjoy something -feel it and use it- without ever fully comprehending it.

Because the mask is your face, the face is a mask, so I'm thinking of the face as a mask because of the way I see faces is coming from an African vision of the mask which is the thing that we carry around with us, it is our presentation, it's our front, it's our face.