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?

We have a lot of sort of received historical ways of viewing portraiture. And I suppose in some way I'm sort of questioning that by toying with the rules of the game.

I happen to be a twin. I grew up half of my life with someone who looks and sounds like me. And I believe it's possible to hold twin desires in your head, such as the desire to create painting and destroy painting at once. The desire to look at a black American culture as underserved, in need of representation, a desire to mine that said culture and to lay its parts bare and look at it almost clinically.

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.

Almost as though the painting itself becomes the embodiment of a type of struggle for visibility, and this might be considered the main subject of the painting.

How does the artist function as poet-slash-witness-slash-trickster?

I have a lot of problems with Western European easel painting.