Life really changes. And it gets lighter, for the most part. You tolerate yourself and others better.

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

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.

Stained glass enabled the modern world.

I certainly am one of those people who is incredibly privileged to have an art career, which happened out of luck. Then luck kept happening. Besides that, things just move along in their own weird way.

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.

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.