Status and class and social anxiety and perhaps social code are all released when you look at paintings of powerful individuals from the past.

A realization and a dissection of the canon gave rise to the work. But there's also a sneaking suspicion of the canon.

You have to bring books to explain your work.

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

He [Michael Jackson] would choose specific moments. They were art history books that I prefer. They were paintings that he prefers. It's this dance back and forth. We were halfway through the dance. He died.

We have a lot of sort of received historical ways of viewing portraiture. And I suppose in some way I'm sort of questioning that by toying with the rules of the game.

I try to create a place of disorientation.