I like the idea of watching the sun go down in the ocean. I've always felt comfortable about that, I like sunsets. There's something about a westward movement that seems fascinating, although the Irish refer to going West as a metaphor for dying. I see it differently.

A person who is driven to spend their time and energy doing something must believe in it, whether they want recognition for it, money from it, or if it's a cathartic experience to do it, whatever their motivation that is valid for them. That's the artist's motivator.

I think at one point, a whole new younger generation of critics come in and they're really aware of zeitgeist in their group, and the older artists tend to get forgotten as their critics retire and do other things or stop paying attention. So there's a factor of aging that I think is to be considered, too. As a middle-aged artist, you kind of get put on a shelf for the young ones.

One nice thing about L.A. is that you can work here in privacy, but that also works against you because you can get forgotten here, too. I think in New York, it's hard to be left alone. It's hard to have privacy whereas here, you can have it.

I think we all have a tendency to have things. Even, I've noticed, people on the street collect things. So I think there's some kind of human impulse to collect. That's why they build museums, I guess.

I've always seen process of crafting as part of the thinking process. It really forms the gestation of the work. I'll get an idea; I want to express this idea, sometimes I'll start it, but during the process of making the object - if it's an object or a painting - it changes. It never goes in a linear progression from A to Zed. It's always this kind of circuitous, stumbling, groping in the dark kind of process of evolving.

I don't keep up with the art world. It's out there and if I did that too much, I wouldn't get my own work done. So I look at it every so often, "Oh, yeah, oh, okay," and go back to work. Life isn't that long. You got to do what you can when you have it.