Even though you're reading something, it's as though that person who wrote it is speaking to you. It's a form of conversation, really.

Whatever came out came out. That was it. That's what you live with. If you don't like it, that's your problem.

Most of the criticism of my work was pretty good, but occasionally it would not be. And I just sort of felt that they absolutely didn't get what I was doing. It was their limitations on what they thought art should be or what they thought my work should be in relation to earlier work or whatever.

I've always said my biggest influence is my, just, the last work I did, the last piece I made.

I mean, part of the justification for art is art history, the fact that you're part of this tradition. You can't really operate outside of it. So looking for what this work is really about, if I look at Velázquez, if I look at Las Meninas or The Tapestry Weavers [1657] or something and really study it and try to figure out what that painting is really about, then I find relationships between what I'm trying to do and what he was doing.

I relied mainly on other artists, who I think are smarter than critics, any critics or curators or anybody like that. They really know.

I'm my own worst critic. I mean, I know what's wrong with everything that I've done.