By being critical, you also develop your own style of what you like, what direction you want to move.

I'm getting more and more into Chinese art and Japanese, some of those scroll paintings are amazing. You follow the change of the seasons. It's really something. These guys were great masters and of course the use of space.

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 didn't like anti-Vietnam War art. I didn't like feminist art. I thought it was heavy-handed and stupid - as art.

The big thing is I try not to repeat.

I don't really use still photography very much anymore except to document my work.

A word refers to something in the real world and so, in a way, does a photo. It's not the thing itself, but it's a kind of suggestion of where you might look for that thing.