There's something of a painting of a woman that represents all women - and by extension, all of humanity - that I just find very exciting. It's a nice distillation, I think, of what it means to be alive.

The goal of art-making in general is communication.

Failures in art usually lead to something else interesting.

Smells are so powerful and evocative, sometimes stronger than visual cues.

When I first started painting candyland imagery, I was looking for the best possible metaphor for everything that is pleasure, desire and insatiability.

I can go to parties all the time and not see people I want to work with, but then sometimes I do, and the way I try to describe it is that I like to refer to art history a lot in my paintings, and there are some people who just have a face that feels like art historical. Like they could be in a Tiepolo painting as a person riding through the sky in a chariot, or she could be in a fashion magazine.

In terms of the class structure that you see so much in European portraiture, I don't think one feels that in America in the 21st century. But we have these other kinds of social structures now, like celebrity, who establish new hierarchies.