When you get older, you're running out of time. You care more about trying to stay on the planet a little longer, so you can learn how to draw better!

In our family, there wasn't anything else besides art. Nothing else in the world existed. My father never spoke about going to a movie or listening to music, other than my mother's singing.

I love flying buttresses!

I always say I'm Catholic - but a cultural Catholic. I wouldn't say I'm a spiritual person, although I pray every day.

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

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 got into animals by drawing hair follicles. I liked drawing hair, and from that I got into feathers and fur, then into images of animals. The patterning is the same, but the proportions of the body change from one animal to the next. A lot of it is just geometry and consciousness.