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

One of my most strong memories was studying with Mel Bochner, one of the, I think, high water marks of American conceptual art.

You know, I'm incredibly blessed to be able to have this level of choice as an artist today. In this economy, it's something that I, you know, pinch myself at constantly, just thinking about how I could wake up tomorrow and decide I'm going to start painting this or that. So it's good.

Let's talk about the artist's desire to go beyond the pictorial or the representational and the desire to create the abstract - the idea that painting can go beyond what is seen. What we found is that, increasingly, painting became about paint, its own material truth. When I'm talking about the way that we look at others and the way that we see ourselves increasingly, looking at others becomes its own material truth.

You'll find that street casting in America is a lot different than street casting in different nations.

Portraiture is something that we're all drawn to. I think primarily other forms - we prefer, by and large, to look at human beings than a bowl of fruit.

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