I feel sometimes constrained by the expectation that the work should be solely political. I try to create a type of work that is at the service of my own set of criteria, which have to do with beauty and a type of utopia that in some ways speaks to the culture I'm located in.

I create something that means something to me, to the world, and try to do my best. I can't fix everything.

I began working within the streets of Harlem, where, after graduating from Yale [University, New Haven, CT], I became the artist in residence at the Studio Museum in Harlem [New York, NY]. I wanted to know what that was about. I would actually pull people from off of the streets and ask them to come to my studio.

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

I was surrounded by art by virtue of not only the educational opportunities that my mother's foresight availed me to.

I think that one of the questions that I asked of myself in later years was to this point of the political directive.

I guess art is in the eye of the beholder.