Sometimes I'm not so sure how healthy it is because it's exhausting to put all your emotion into your work, but I guess I should be thankful for that. I don't want the work to be about anything else but the truth and honesty.

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.

People have thought that some of my writing and lines are done by a machine. I'm able to move in a way that's part gestural dance performance, and it's fun for me, so I incorporate that into the painting.

I have too much energy, even for myself. I'm lucky to have something that focuses me.

For me, the canvas is an abstract interpretation of a wall. It's a piece of art with its own history, one that alludes to the passage of time and to the theater of life.

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.