I think the pursuit of trying to understand things is really a critical issue. I see the issue of life and death in everything I do. I'm trying to find answers. It can be quite frustrating.

If you're fortunate enough with your history, like with Men in the Cities, your work becomes so absorbed in culture that the authorship of it doesn't exist anymore.

Art is a form of understanding like philosophy and science and mathematics are an understanding but the difference is that art has the capacity to hold all these different things. It is the form of understanding that is best suited for the contemporary time.

As an artist - I'm sure like most creative people - you have a kind of board of directors that you make your work for. It's a group of people that you have, these friends, and you want to know what they think. In a weird way, you're making the work for them.

I find that all these subjects that I'm dealing with tend to lead me to religion and politics one way or another. It's not something that I necessarily want to address, but it seems like it's screaming at me to pay attention to it.

An artist can have an intention, but the viewer has their own subjective experience.

The ebb and flow as an artist is a bizarre experience, for sure. I was lucky enough to become successful pretty young - in late '79, 1980 - with a body of work that got recognized and became an archetype.