As a young kid I was in love with breakdancing. I practiced the uprock style, which is a battle style of dance that looks like fighting. It comes from the gangs in New York in the 1960s and '70s. It's beautiful, almost like a martial art, and it can be funny, too, because you make fun of each other.

If I'm going through something, I paint through it. It's very physical. I'm writing, I'm thinking, I'm meditating, I'm moving, I'm jumping off ladders, and it's therapeutic.

Sometimes I think I shouldn't explain much about my work because people will just feel what they feel when they see it. They'll love it or hate it or enjoy it on their own, like how I've looked at abstract paintings of other artists and cried or felt happy because I've felt, "Wow, I've lived that, I've understood that."

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.

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 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.