There's always a joy in newness as a painter, and in sub-Saharan Africa, I encountered different realities with regard to light and how it bounces across the skin. The way that blues and purples come into play. In India and Sri Lanka, it was no different. It became a moment in which I had an opportunity to learn as a painter how to create the body in full form, and that's a very material and aesthetic thing. This is not conceptual. It's all an abstraction.

Portraiture is something that we're all drawn to. I think primarily other forms - we prefer, by and large, to look at human beings than a bowl of fruit.

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.

That's the trouble with, I think, my - the contemporary read of my work. So many people just simply say, "These are pretty pictures of black boys." They're not really thinking about, like, what the whole thing is.

One of my most strong memories was studying with Mel Bochner, one of the, I think, high water marks of American conceptual art.

I think that's kind of indicative of a type of self-confidence that people develop when they recognize their own ability to create.

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.