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 high school I was good at math and everybody wanted me to do something with that - mathematics or engineering - which was a nightmare scenario for me. Meeting other artists and going to punk rock shows at that age, there was a feeling of freedom and community that I wanted to partake in.

For me, at some point, the idea of struggling through the process was not as interesting as doing tests and executing the painting after I figured out all of its elements and how they were going to work together.

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

Sometimes a collage element I hit upon can inspire the entire drawing.

In terms of my inspirations to become an artist, I think they come from early ideas and impressions about community, and the type of community I wanted to be in, and the type of thinking I wanted to do.

Co-mingling really disturbs a lot of the purists, who want to see the historical and cultural divides instead of the meshing.