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

In my work, I want to create an understanding, not about what a painting looks like but about what a painting says.

There were certain expectations that were assumed of me as a young black American 20th-century - then 20th-century artist.

At age 20 I went to go find my father in Nigeria. And after much toil, I finally figured out exactly where he was. And there's something about seeing your father for the first time - my mother destroyed all pictures of him.

And as a young black man, a lot of my professors would really think that it was useful to see the work of politically oriented, positivistic, leftist creative works. And I found it incredibly useful. And I found it something that I've learned from and gained from.

Painting is situational. And my particular situation exists within gender, race, class, sexuality, nation.

What came out of that was an intense obsession with status anxiety. So much of these portraits are about fashioning oneself into the image of perfection that ruled the day in the 18th and 19th centuries. It's an antiquated language, but I think we've inherited that language and have forwarded it to its most useful points in the 21st century.