He's a great - he's a great professor. He retired recently, but.But Peter Halley as well.

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.

You'll probably die if you stay with me, ' he told me.'Then I'm dead either way, because I won't survive without you.

In this day and age, there is a special mandate for every one of us to be in-charge of our lives by sitting at the driver's seat of our lives. Rule your world!

On this shrunken globe, men can no longer live as strangers.

I began to look at all events and all things as relevant, an opportunity to take or avoid.

I got Mary pregnant and man that's all she wrote. And for my 19th birthday, I got a union card and a factory coat.

One day they will invent a time machine and, like the internet, it will be used primarily for boning.

Never go in a place that you wouldn't take your wife.

Politics is in my blood. I'd love to be involved in 2008, maybe even '06.

Life is used up all the same, whether we save, spend, or waste it.

Has any man ever obtained inner harmony by simply reading about the experiences of others? Not since the world began has it ever happened. Each man must go through the fire himself.