I love the of dealing with the homoerotic versus the idea of dealing with certain tropes with regards to black masculinity in the world, propensity towards sports, antisocial behavior, hypersexuality - all of these sort of non-truths that I don't exist in but that I see as being fixed in the world's imagination.

I use those expectations as a color on my palette, a certain temperature in the room. You can use those expectations for the great punchline, but also for a great painting, in society.

That should be something that an artist can respond to as well in terms of a painting.

Unlike the background in many of the paintings that I was inspired by or paintings that I borrowed poses from - the great European paintings of the past - the background in my work does not play a passive role.

Just physically, if you looked at the house that I grew up in, my mother created this greenhouse. And surrounded the entire property. And there was, like, trees and sculptures and like - it was, like, this crazy, like, secret garden space.

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

So much of the hubris that surrounded conceptual art in the 1950s through '70s was that it had this arrogant presupposition that pointing in and of itself was a creative act. It never rigorously politically and socially analyzed the fact that the luxury to point is something that so many people throughout the world don't have.