I had an amazing instructor, Joseph Gotto , who, as a painter, spoke to me as it - he didn't condescend.

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

There's nothing shocking inherently about that, given that so much of the way that artists are taught is by copying old master paintings.

I like to play with the conventions around what we expect of paintings historically. But I also like to play with the conventions that you expect from a Kehinde Wiley painting, too.

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.

There is no purity with regards to the marketplace and art, I believe.

This is something that, as artists, we constantly deal with-throwing away the past, slaying the father, and creating the new. This desire to throw away the old rules.