When you're at your best, you're analyzing yourself and becoming increasingly isolated from a broader narrative.

While I can hire out the portrait, I don't, because it's just - that's where I shine. You know, that's my blood sport.

I actually studied cooking and, like, was thinking about becoming a chef.

Almost as though the painting itself becomes the embodiment of a type of struggle for visibility, and this might be considered the main subject of the painting.

Painting is situational. And my particular situation exists within gender, race, class, sexuality, nation.

How does the artist function as poet-slash-witness-slash-trickster?

I think what we should concentrate on is what it feels like to be a working artist in the day to day. One doesn't imagine what comes down the line.