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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.