Nature is an unpleasing, stupid, lumpy, blowsy wench.
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.
I think the world that I grew up in was like being in this sort of magical artistic garden.
There is something to be said about laying bare the vocabulary of the aristocratic measure, right? There's something to be said about allowing the powerless to tell their own story.
Can I - do I have to be obsessed with it and proceed from that? Not always. But when I'm on top of my game, I definitely think about the way that the world sees me and the way that the world thinks about painting. You must.
It was probably one of the things that gave me a sense of possibility and allowed for me to see beyond the small community that I existed within. You know, I was making friends with young Soviet kids. this is during perestroika. You know, there's bread lines and vodka lines. The entire social structure of what was then the Soviet Union was radically different from what we know today.
I grew up in South Central Los Angeles, where people are in cars.
Pop music will never be low brow.
Faith is the soul going out of itself for all its wants.
We have to figure out how to let go, and forgive. This is our job.
Reality has a way of injuring people who don't take it seriously. If you don't believe in gravity, for example, and then step off a tall building, you won't just float away.