I've always found paintings of nudes depressing because they can't compete with photographs. The grainiest photograph of some girl, a blurry Polaroid - you'd rather look at that than the Venus de Milo, because you think, Wow, that's really somebody... This camera really was in front of this real naked lady.

I find I can't get rid of my trashiness as an artist. A lot of my themes in painting, to the extent that there are intentional themes, are meant to bring that conundrum into high relief.

It wasn't really until after I got out of art school that I realized that I'd been doing that sort of for the audience, for that context. Somehow, being alone in the room, it made no sense at all to make those kinds of paintings.

A lot of times maturing as an artist is just starting to do the things you like to do.

There is, literally and figuratively, not a gold standard. That's almost as big a problem in art as in the financial world. How do you affix a value to something that only has value because a certain number of people agree to believe in that value?

I'd like to get the sex thing over with, but I realized I'm not done with it. You should never will a change in your work - you have to work an idea to death. I often find that the best things happen when you're near the end.

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.