It's an incredible dilemma to be an artist of color and to always be in denial about that, saying, 'I'm a choreographer first and then I'm black,' when in fact, that's not the case. I'm black first and then I'm also a choreographer.
I used to kind of go for it, right? Like, I'd be the one who would say, 'All right, there's Kate Moss. I'm going to try to make out with her.'
Most people live in the city and go to the country at the weekend, and that's posh and aristocratic, but actually to live in the country and come to London when you can't take it any more is different.
I think I've always been afraid of painting, really. Right from the beginning. All my paintings are about painting without a painter. Like a kind of mechanical form of painting.
I've had laser eye surgery and I don't wear glasses any more, so people just go, 'You're not Damien Hirst.' I don't get recognized on the street.
I used to watch 'Top of the Pops' when I was a kid and say 'Yeah!' or 'Boo!' at every single song. So there was nothing in the middle. You brutally put it on one side or another.
But, I would always be thinking of how pictures are constructed and colour, how to use it, I mean you're using it for constructing, makes you think about it, the place did as well.
I was aware that the teaching of drawing was being stopped almost 30 years ago. And I always said, 'The teaching of drawing is the teaching of looking.' A lot of people don't look very hard.
I made a photograph of a garden in Kyoto, the Zen garden, which is a rectangle. But a photograph taken from any one point will not show, well it shows a rectangle, but not with ninety degree angles.
Usually when someone says a thing is too simple, they're saying that certain familiar things aren't there, and they're seeing a couple maybe that are left, which they count as a couple, that's all.
Coming out as a Barbra Streisand fan was way more embarrassing than coming out as a lesbian. To be an artist of my generation willing to be unhip - artists were supposed to be like cowboys.
One thing that changed when I moved upstate was that I became interested in different materials. I started making the stone benches because I was seeing rocks.
I wanted to support things that are helpful to people and maybe bash what I think is dangerous. So I switched from being everybody to being myself.
IT'S NO FUN WATCHING PEOPLE WOUND THEMSELVES SO THAT THEY CAN HOLE UP, NURSE THEMSELVES BACK TO HEALTH, AND REPEAT THE CYCLE. THEY DON'T KNOW WHAT ELSE TO DO.
MORE THAN ONCE I'VE AWAKENED WITH TEARS RUNNING DOWN MY CHEEKS. I HAVE HAD TO THINK WHETHER I WAS CRYING OR WHETHER IT IS INVOLUNTARY, LIKE DROOLING.
Wrestling has grown so big... it's almost a culture. And it's a culture of all types of vibes, just like hip-hop has all kinds of vibes and rap has all kinds of vibes.
I think that one wants from a painting a sense of life. The final suggestion, the final statement, has to be not a deliberate statement but a helpless statement. It has to be what you can't avoid saying.
As one gets older one sees many more paths that could be taken. Artists sense within their own work that kind of swelling of possibilities, which may seem a confusion, or a freedom.
If you have an idea, you have to move on it, to make a gesture. Drawing is an immediate way of articulating that idea - of making a gesture that is both physical and intellectual.
If I try to articulate every little detail in a drawing, it would be like missing the forest for the trees, so it's just about getting the outline of the forest.
The satirical direction I have chosen is an indication of my disappointment in man, which is the opposite way of saying that I have high expectations for the human race.
