I think a lot of people take a scholarly approach where they feel like you're supposed to study things that depress you.

There is a fascination with violence and power in all modernism, and I sort of saw classic modernism as being more similar to Wyndham Lewis than to the Renaissance. It's not about flow and the presence of humanism and all those things.

I wonder whether there is such a thing as critical art. I suppose there are portraits of people who could destroy you.

Just don't do things that depress you. I realized if it depresses me, then I just don't want to get close to it. If it brings me down, I just really can't get into it.

I suppose the good artists, the righteous artists, somehow manage to be exuberant, and the embarrassed artist has this idea that everybody has to stop being so excited, which I find so distasteful.

That was an important development for me, just realizing that you need to follow your pleasure, at least as a painter. I think any kind of artist needs to, no matter what you're doing.

When I went to college, and I went to art school, I started to realize that Warhol was cool and that pop art was fun.