In some way they are all self-portraits, but I think I know what you mean by asking this - I would say, it is too idealistic to paint yourself.

My mother's from Texas. Small town outside of Waco called Downsville. And my father's from Nigeria. And so I guess I'm properly African-American.

It became a question of taste. I have a certain taste in art history. And that - I had a huge library of art history books in my studio. And I would simply have the models go through those books with me, and we began a conversation about, like, what painting means, why we do it, why people care about it why or how it can mean or make sense today.

What I love in art is that it takes known combinations and reorders them in a way that sheds light on something that they have never seen before or allows to consider the world in a slightly different way.

When I look back at my paintings, they don't give me a sense of where I was when I first met that guy. They don't give me a sense of what I felt like when I first saw that original source material. They give me a sense of the world that I'm trying to create. And we all just have to deal with that.

Unlike the background in many of the paintings that I was inspired by or paintings that I borrowed poses from - the great European paintings of the past - the background in my work does not play a passive role.

My peers at the time: you know, young black kids from off the streets of Harlem, having these conversations with me in my small, dirty little studio up in Harlem.