What the artist attempts to do is to try and tell a story. Attempting to give physical expression to a story that's internal.

My father was a psycho-analyst and I think that fact was very influential on my development as an artist. Trying to search beneath the surface of things for an unexpected sense of mystery.

It's about finding meaning through light. I'm always interested in tensions. A primary one is the collision between the familiar and the strange.

We all strive to find moments of clarity, of order.

I think maybe the figures - that's a good word - the figures in my pictures are stand-ins for my own need to make a connection.

There's a parallel between me going through these enormous efforts to try to make a moment that means something - and in a way, the figures are doing the same thing. There is that parallel, for sure.

For all the talk of my pictures being narratives or that they're about storytelling, there's really very little actually happening in the pictures. One of the few things I always tell people in my pictures is that I want less - give me something less.