For many years I hoped to have an exhibition in China, because of my family connection.

I was poorer than anyone I'd ever met. But it was a great time to be a young artist - I remember it as a period of exceptional creative freedom and adventure, when one was regularly presented with works of art unlike anything one had ever seen before.

I try to make images that have the immediate presence we take for granted in objects - a chair, a shoe, a book, a Judd - and compose them like sentences.

When I was in Wuhan, I went to the art school, which was one of the most important art schools in China, an enormous art school. One of the things that I saw is that the schools are very big and there are so many students. It is very difficult to me to teach creative activity to great numbers of people, because I think you need personal contact with students, you need to speak individually, you need individual contact between teachers and students, you need continuity. To me this is a problem in mass education in every society now.

It is very important to develop the thing that you are naturally good at, that you are truly interested in.

I had my exhibition of paintings first in Shanghai, and then recently in Wuhan. Wuhan particularly interested me, because I am 1/8 Chinese.

[I] don't want people to see it [paintings] as a specific intention on my part. If somebody has that interest in these objects, of course they can see that, but from my own point of view, I'd rather stay as neutral as possible.