After high school I went to the San Francisco Art Institute, and I began a formalized art education where we went through the history of art but we also went through the art of my contemporaries.

I think there's something important in going against the grain, and perhaps finding value in things that aren't necessarily institutionally recognized.

This is something that, as artists, we constantly deal with-throwing away the past, slaying the father, and creating the new. This desire to throw away the old rules.

The backgrounds by design are a very key part of the conversation, because I want a kind of fight or pressure to exist between the figure and the background.

All art is self-portraiture.

Painting is situational. And my particular situation exists within gender, race, class, sexuality, nation.

I believe that artists should be part of the culture. I think that my work clearly bears that out.

The art world has become so insular. The rules have become so autodidactic that, in a sense, they lose track of what people have any interest in thinking about, talking about or even looking at.

We have a lot of sort of received historical ways of viewing portraiture. And I suppose in some way I'm sort of questioning that by toying with the rules of the game.

We're wired to be empathetic and to care about the needs of others, but also to be curious about others. And I think that's just sort of in our DNA. And so portraiture is a very human act.

I guess art is in the eye of the beholder.

The flame is faith.

The worst case of discrimination can be witnessed in music. Imagine calling B 'sharp' in presence of D 'minor

Don’t cry for them to be happy.

Every song is like a painting.

Love is friendship set on fire. Hate is friendship burned.

You cannot afford to rely on history, you have to make it.

Pleasure once tasted satisfies less than the desire experienced for its torments.

Venus yields to caresses, not to compulsion.

I took my lyre and said: come now, my heavenly tortoise shell: become a speaking instrument.

I can do things at 45, not because I can do a bunch of pull-ups, it's because I do Yoga!