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

One of the weirdest things that happened to artists and art criticism was this moment when everyone got cynical and stopped believing in the ability to engage the world in all of its myriad purposes, transformations, and incarnations.

I think that at its best you just have to respect each arena for what they can do well.

I studied shades, textures by painting after the Old Masters, the classical European paintings, as part of my educational process.

I had no idea about where I was going. I had no sense of art as anything other than a problem to be fixed, you know, an itch to be scratched. I was in that studio trying my best to feel content with myself. I had, like, a stipend. I had a place to sleep. I had a studio to work in. I had nothing else to think about, you know. And that's - that was a huge luxury in New York City.

For me, I wanted to create something that's much more driven by a type of selfishness, a type of decadence.

What's interesting about my project recently is that I'm going out into broader global spaces but then isolating at the same time - sort of pushing out but then pulling in.