I think the world that I grew up in was like being in this sort of magical artistic garden.

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 pay my models to work with me, so there becomes this weird sort of economic bartering thing, which made me feel really sort of uncomfortable, almost as though you were buying into a situation - which, again, is another way of looking at those paintings. The body language in those paintings is a lot more stiff.

Whereas I remember being in Dakar, in Senegal, where I have my third studio, and street casting, and I remember looking at the faces of the young men that we were speaking to through translators and so on, showing them the books. Complete - completely different response.

For me, I wanted to create something that's much more driven by a type of selfishness, a type of decadence.

I have been painting white people for much longer in my life than I have done for colored people.

People who - and I think that's been a huge education for me. I think it's a - it's a privilege to be able to meet such a broad cross-section of New York and increasingly the world, and to get a feel of how people respond to visual culture.