If I were making paintings of a bowl of fruit it would still be viewed through some sort of political lens, because the viewer wants to create a type of narrative around the political theme when they look at work depicting black and brown models.

I think that once you're able to sort of get in line with who and how you relate to the world, you'll become closer to this index that I'm referring to. Because what you want is this card that relates to that book. What you want is this human that relates to this world, rather than having this art school society scattering that point of view somewhere in between. It becomes diffused. And that level of clarity, I think, was gained at the Studio Museum in Harlem.

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.

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.

This is something that, as artists, we constantly deal with-throwing away the past, slaying the father, and creating the new. This desire to throw away the old rules.

In my work, I want to create an understanding, not about what a painting looks like but about what a painting says.

Going back to that idea that painting sits still and that we give ourselves over to it over time. There's a difference between living with - imagine if this were sitting in your living room for 15 years. You'd probably understand the contours of it.