[My parents] met in university back in the '70s. And I didn't grow up with my father. He - they separated before I was born.

There is something to be said about laying bare the vocabulary of the aristocratic measure, right? There's something to be said about allowing the powerless to tell their own story.

Most people say, "Hell, no. I don't know who you are. This scares me. Like, I'm not interested in this."Another way of looking at these paintings is, these are the guys who said yes.

I think that artists provide questions, not answers. We provide provocations rather than fully formed objects.

I had an amazing instructor, Joseph Gotto , who, as a painter, spoke to me as it - he didn't condescend.

I was 12 in 1989 during perestroika, when my mother found a program that sent me to Russia to study art in the forests outside of Leningrad.

There were certain expectations that were assumed of me as a young black American 20th-century - then 20th-century artist.