It's a culture. It's - I mean, people obsess over this. And people create subcultures that identify - and there are people in the streets who will recognize certain patterns and signifiers.

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

I began working within the streets of Harlem, where, after graduating from Yale [University, New Haven, CT], I became the artist in residence at the Studio Museum in Harlem [New York, NY]. I wanted to know what that was about. I would actually pull people from off of the streets and ask them to come to my studio.

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

There is no pedestrian culture [in South Central Los Angeles].

[My twin brother] he was the star artist of the family as we - as we were growing up. He eventually lost interest and went more towards literature and then medicine and then business and so on. But for me it became something that I did well. And it felt great being able to make something look like something.

After high school I went to the San Francisco Art Institute, and I began a formalized art education where we went through the history of art but we also went through the art of my contemporaries.