I mean, the radical contingency that is - that exists and the fact that I'm going into the streets and finding random strangers any given day - who's in these streets that day?

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

I think that the Kehinde Wiley brand is something that I'm working towards expanding and to inclusion.

All art is self-portraiture.

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.

Going back to that idea that painting sits still and that we give ourselves over to it over time. There's a difference between living with - imagine if this were sitting in your living room for 15 years. You'd probably understand the contours of it.

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.