When I was young, it was an exciting time to be in New York.

Art is a reflection of everything that impacts your life.

I like Betsy Ross as a model, too, the quilting bee, sitting around with your friends making art, asking what they think, so that you get the benefit of everyone's opinions and so it's not just about you in your you-dom.

You start with a generic body, but I think the first wall you hit with portraiture is comprised of history and storytelling and the nature of characters - whether they are historical or coming from literature or documentation. Those are the references we have to people, besides your family, and the intimacy of portraiture is in the specifics of individuals. For me, it came out of doing things about animals.

I think that sense of always traveling has something to do with anonymity and privacy and pleasure in having a very clear, very reductive life.

I had stopped making figures, and then I began making images of animals in nature, which was a way to introduce the figure.

As a child I prayed that my calling be revealed - but not with expectation and not with a destination. I became an artist because I didn't know what to do and I thought it was really fun to make things.