I've met others [people] who simply responded to me, "You're Kehinde Wiley. I know your work. I saw it at the Brooklyn Museum [Brooklyn, NY] And I'd be honored to be in your work."

Usually I bring very attractive women with me to excite interest. I mean, it's a type of, like, strangers-with-candy situation.

I was 12 in 1989 during perestroika, when my mother found a program that sent me to Russia to study art in the forests outside of Leningrad.

My mother's from Texas. Small town outside of Waco called Downsville. And my father's from Nigeria. And so I guess I'm properly African-American.

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 that I'm increasingly aware of the fact that in order to work towards any statement that's radically global or universal, you have to start in a place that's radically intimate and particular.