We got interested in aesthetics, and then at the end of all of it we fell off the precipice. It's almost like crawling back because so many techniques are lost, and so we're going to have a [small] reserve of teachers who can teach the vast number of interested students. We have these poor, hungry, starving people who want to learn something and no place to get it. It's a tragedy.

Photographs and reality are just night and day. In reality, the information is all there. A photograph is just kind of a hint.

I'm drawing in my head pretty much.

If you find yourself with a weakness, attack it... don't develop a technique that avoids your weaknesses.

I try to think and design in color.

My career doesn't depend on painting Bill Clinton.

I think of music a lot when I paint. The theme of it to a degree is music. So instead of literally putting in music or literally putting in a musical instrument, I use only a hint of the instrument, but the brocaded pattern is like a line of Bach because of its order and the leaves going up are like passages from Vivaldi, and the emphasis on drapery is where the sound comes.