I think a lot of male artists should and probably are thinking in the same ways. The culture has moved in a more democratic, pluralistic direction. You now find a lot of people who are looking outside of the mainstream of the history of art for their mentors. Maybe not heroes, but mentors.

I feel like there’s a space of personal freedom for me where my art-making happens. When I go to that space, I’m completely in this world of possibility.

In art school, they teach you to struggle through the process: If you have your image down, you've painted it, and it's not looking the way you wanted it to, you can do wet on wet - you just keep moving the image around.

I’m not sure a lot of other people would walk up to the same artwork and see the shadow on the person’s face from the hat and be like “Do you see that!” It’s about noticing things that interest you, and that definitely happens with the natural world as well.

I feel no shame about having paintings be as grandiose and ridiculous as possible.

The humor for me is how far above your head the signature is - it's dislocated from the sign of the artist in such a distinct way that it could almost be a self-portrait of a sort.

I think that I'm going to be including a lot of anonymous female artists in what I look at and incorporate. Most textiles are created by women. Generally, most stuff that's not in the canon is created by women.