What we have now is a communication ability. We have the ability to see working ideas that are going on in the great cities throughout the world and whether you live in Shanghai or you live in Sao Paulo, you have the ability of seeing and knowing the ideas of some of the greatest minds of our generation.

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

I actually studied cooking and, like, was thinking about becoming a chef.

All art is self-portraiture.

I'm fully capable of multitasking certain conceptual concerns within the work.

That should be something that an artist can respond to as well in terms of a painting.

I think, at the L.A. County Museum of Art, I saw my first example of Kerry James Marshall, who had a very sort of heroic, oversized painting of black men in a barbershop. But it was painted on the same level and with the same urgency that you would see in a grand-scale [Anthony] van Dyck or [Diego] Velazquez. The composition was classically informed; the painting technique was masterful. And it was something that really inspired me because, you know, these were images of young, black men in painting on the museum walls of one of the more sanctified and sacred institutions in Los Angeles.