We live in a time when people are afraid of beauty, because beauty passes; you can't hang on to it. And even if you see something or someone beautiful, the next time you hear it, it sounds different. So you can't cling to beauty; beauty passes and when that passes, you realize you pass too, and you will die. And that's why people cry at a beautiful view, a beautiful lecture, a beautiful painting, a new baby.

I want art to affect the viewer and for the viewer to take it away to enhance, embrace, and elevate life. That's the spiritual aspect. Painting is a spiritual practice, but sometimes it is hard to give up control!

Art as a political gesture is committed to making something beautiful, and then understanding what beauty is in your own time, because what we think of as beauty changes with time. The notion of beauty everywhere changes.

To handle paint the way Pollock did, you need the muscularity of a ballet dancer.

The spiritual in my art is giving up control. My paintings are based on what I can do, and what I can do is not controlled. So I give up control, and that's the spiritual aspect of the work - taking what comes and relinquishing control. Although they look very controlled, they're really not, because it's all poured paint.

I'm purposeless. I'm making art because I want you to look at that painting and I want it to affect you in some way, to change what you see, to change how you see it. To change how you see something, whatever.

I have my moods, but I can always see something beautiful.