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.

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

You make the work for yourself first and the next line is the people you trust, and you know that they're going to tell you what they feel. They let you know if you're dishing bullshit or if it's real.

Modern abstract art starts in Russia in about 1915 with Malevich, and then the Russian Revolution happens, and eventually all that experimental art gets squashed and social realism comes back into play. All of a sudden, Malevich is no longer painting black squares; he's painting peasants in colorful schmattas.

When I look back on everything I've done, it all somehow makes sense to me. But it doesn't make sense when you're actually doing it.

The thing that's interesting as you get older as an artist is that the biggest challenge seems to be: how do you stay relevant?

I've been dealing with epic images, and I realized all of a sudden that I grew up in the age of epics.