People's love of sweets and guilty feelings about overindulgence are pretty universal.
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.
Failures in art usually lead to something else interesting.
The goal of art-making in general is communication.
Smells are so powerful and evocative, sometimes stronger than visual cues.
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.