I love being able to have a team.

My assistants generally do all the flowers and all of the decorative work. I concentrate on the figure.

I think, something that you might be able to locate in the work that I'm creating today: the ability to look at a black America as something that not only can be mined in a very sort of cynical, cold way, but also embraced in a very personal, love-driven way; but also sort of critiqued.

What it is is a type of editorialization, you know? This is self-portraiture. This is what you think about the world we live in.

There are just so many different types of people that come into my studio, and secondarily, there's the idea of ideation, like, "Who are you and what do you see in yourself in this other person?" So many different people that you would see so many different things.

I was 11 when I was first introduced to live drawing classes and going to art school.

So sometimes you have to play your hand and sort of push in a direction. And I think that masculinity is the driving point for a lot of the way that people, like, posture in the work.