There is a political and racial context behind everything that I do. Not always because I design it that way, or because I want it that way, but rather because it's just the way people look at the work of an African-American artist in this country.

I think that one of the questions that I asked of myself in later years was to this point of the political directive.

I think, at the L.A. County Museum of Art, I saw my first example of Kerry James Marshall, who had a very sort of heroic, oversized painting of black men in a barbershop. But it was painted on the same level and with the same urgency that you would see in a grand-scale [Anthony] van Dyck or [Diego] Velazquez. The composition was classically informed; the painting technique was masterful. And it was something that really inspired me because, you know, these were images of young, black men in painting on the museum walls of one of the more sanctified and sacred institutions in Los Angeles.

What's interesting about my project recently is that I'm going out into broader global spaces but then isolating at the same time - sort of pushing out but then pulling in.

Just physically, if you looked at the house that I grew up in, my mother created this greenhouse. And surrounded the entire property. And there was, like, trees and sculptures and like - it was, like, this crazy, like, secret garden space.

I use those expectations as a color on my palette, a certain temperature in the room. You can use those expectations for the great punchline, but also for a great painting, in society.

Usually I bring very attractive women with me to excite interest. I mean, it's a type of, like, strangers-with-candy situation.