What's interesting about making art is that you take everything you know about it and you bring it up to that point, and you start making a physical thing that addresses what that is. And when you do it, you don't know anything about it - if it's going to work or not work.

It doesn't matter what I think I am, it matters what I do.

There were some types of sanctions that happen in the public world that made my work acceptable, where someone looks at the paintings and they don't - they may go, "okay," and then look at it in a different sort of way. Instead of just looking at it as some type of wild art, they look at it in a historical perspective or context.

There are generations of people who have never seen a big plate painting in person. And they don't know what the hell they look like, they don't know what it feels like to stand in a room with them.

In a certain way, my work had set me up to be against lots of things. If there wasn't some sort of sanction for it in the public world, it might have been...it wouldn't have been tolerated, because people don't want things to get shaken up.

I like when people get really close to the paintings, when they can't really get away from them, I like them to operate in that way on the viewer.

Paintings are not like the Internet. They're not like movies. They're not electronic-friendly. You have to go see them. You have to stand in front of them. That's the great thing about them.