I'm very tolerant of other art and other artists. But what I truly appreciate, what I truly admire in contemporary art, is work that takes on more than it can sometimes handle - art that gets in over its head.

I think that is the role of the artist in society - the cultural role of the artist is to perform a healing function.

I'm very tolerant of other art and other artists. But what I truly appreciate, what I truly admire in contemporary art, is work that takes on more than it can sometimes handle - art that gets in over its head.

For me, the whole idea of the radically new is tied to a close reconsideration of older sources. I like to give myself over to those sources, as points of origin, in order to bring things forward. My approach requires me to internalize my sources as much as possible in the hope that new themes might emerge. The material has to be internalized in order for it to live again. Ultimately, paintings reveal themselves on the basis of what they are. They are inseparable from the physical process that goes into their making.

An artist makes something to be physically experienced by another person. It's a raw, freely chosen, interpersonal relationship between the maker and the viewer, so it's close to what a musical composer does, or a poet or a dancer. It is coming out of one's inner being.

Art exists through the act of making. It has to somehow be made manifest to another person. It has to do with what one wants to see manifest, what one wants to bring into the world, what one desires to have exist.

I don't want to fetishize the past. I want there to be a natural sequence coming out of a synthesis of the ideas and information that I gather together as a result of looking at things that are in the world. I'm trying to bring forward signs or signals based on what I see and my responses to these things. I'm trying to leave a trail that will be useful to other people in the future. It has to do with making something that contains a synthesis of the information, and then consequently to make one's deliberations visible, to allow other people to follow them. That's how I see my role.