You try to tap into a memory and you close your eyes and it comes back. So I was doing this in the painting and then that became a practice of mine. Sometimes it was a cathartic situation, a way to meditate.

Sometimes I'm inspired by a certain part of my life - I'm thinking about a place and I'll mix the colors from memory.

I think artists should define themselves. They should speak about their work and how it relates to society and what's going on in the world.

One teacher told me that my work belonged in the trash. That day I ran out of the classroom and ended up in the library, where there happened to be a black and white photography exhibition of Robert Rauschenberg's photographs of the streets of New York. The subject of his photos were exactly what I was painting about.

The walls around us bear witness to lives past and present.

My style also has a lot to do with theater because often I'm imagining I'm a character who is wandering by a wall and leaves a mark. Then I'm someone else, who 10 days later leaves another mark. Someone was angry and did this, and then someone came and painted over it, and then the sun bleached it out and the weather exposed it again.

I never want to abandon my roots. I want to give my past and the history of painting the importance it deserves, including the masters like Rembrandt, who built up the surface of the canvas with transparent layers.