I think that an obsession with art history gave rise to the work.

I have a really strong suspicion of the romantic nature of portraiture, the idea that you're telling some essential truth about the interior lives of your subject.

A realization and a dissection of the canon gave rise to the work. But there's also a sneaking suspicion of the canon.

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

I think, at the L.A. County Museum of Art, I saw my first example of Kerry James Marshall, who had a very sort of heroic, oversized painting of black men in a barbershop. But it was painted on the same level and with the same urgency that you would see in a grand-scale [Anthony] van Dyck or [Diego] Velazquez. The composition was classically informed; the painting technique was masterful. And it was something that really inspired me because, you know, these were images of young, black men in painting on the museum walls of one of the more sanctified and sacred institutions in Los Angeles.

You have to bring books to explain your work.

I think what's really interesting and useful about this question is that ultimately all art is a type of self-portraiture. And so in the act of identifying yourself, you're using others to get to that point. And so you're parsing out different aspects of different people in the world. You're choosing not only from America but increasingly globally different aspects of what's out there.