I think what's happened in art criticism, or art thinking, in last 30 or 40 years is a confusion between the what - the subject - and the how. Most attention goes to the what, but it's the how that's the important part - how something is brought into being.

I guess I have no motivation to make an abstract painting, even if they sometimes read as abstract. I think, with abstraction, it's easy to fall into a sort of pastiche.

Painting can also be too earnest at times and that's a drag. You don't want to go in that direction either. It should be holistic. It should represent the whole of your personality, I guess, so if somebody is a sincere painter or an ironic painter, then they're just bullshitting the audience and presenting only an idealized version of themselves.

A picture can be funny and also weep inducing. One cries for many reasons. The state of weeping, for me, is induced by recognition of a rarified level of integration - thinking about what must it have taken to reach that integration.

The thing is that the money issue looms so large in art now. And it has absolutely nothing to do with art. If you're painting goes for ten grand or a hundred grand, it doesn't make painting any easier. And it doesn't make the painting any better if it goes for a hundred grand.

I'm not a planner. I should be more articulate about what the imagery means, but I don't have a good reason for it it's just there.

I think painting has that unique potential to project opposing viewpoints.

The internet might be a convenience, but it hasn't yet, for me, been a fundamental reordering. These things are supposed to be time-savers, so you have more time standing at your easel if you so choose.

There's something retro about the pop culture references in the paintings, so I'd imagine it's not as much a pop culture reference as a pop art reference.

The era of television in which I grew up was much simpler than now. Its conventions were quite transparent and fun to think about. Who could ever remember the plot of those shows?

I don't really get excited about good things happening to me.

A good painting has to do about 12 things at once.

I think, with abstraction, it's easy to fall into a sort of pastiche.

I love looking at sculpture, but there's some sort of spell that's broken with it.

I've had phases where the compass point seems lost. It can happen for various reasons, among them, that you're trying to do something outside your skill set your skills have to catch up with the things you see in your head. But it's important to make all of those paintings, even the failed ones.

There's art that I think is pretty silly, but it doesn't get under my skin like it used to.

I can only think of a handful of artists that can make a funny painting or a funny sculpture without it feeling coined in someway.

People weep at music all the time, because music gives form to some abstract level of integration.