My whole purpose of taking on miniature painting was to break the tradition, to experiment with it, to find new ways of making meaning, to question the relevance of it.
Knowing how to paint and to use one's colors rightly has not any connection with originality. This originality consists in properly expressing your own impressions.
I share something in common with Norman Rockwell and, for that matter, with Walt Disney. In that I really like to make people happy.
My paintings always feature trails that dissolve into mysterious areas, patches of light that lead the eye around corners, pathways, open gates, etc.
I enjoy working with people. I understand that as a necessity. And clearly that's something that develops as you get older. And I've grown into that.
We only exist in terms of how we think we exist. Meaning every cultural development is fabricated and can be fabricated.
New York is this cacophony - a collection of radical differences, an agreement of non sequiturs. The diversity and intensity are startling.
I moved around a lot when I was a child; two of the houses I grew up in have totally disappeared. One was burnt in a riot, and the other was pulled down.
Being a black artist, the first thing people want to talk about is your blackness, the importance of your blackness, and your black presence.
You know you're in love when you don't want to fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams.
Painters were also attorneys, happy storytellers of anecdote, psychologists, botanists, zoologists, archaeologists, engineers, but there were no creative painters.
In South America, I heard the 8th Symphony of Beethoven. And the young conductor thought, Beethoven must be heroic. But this is piece which shouldn't be heroic. And this was such a misunderstanding, such a deep misunderstanding.
If you listen to a Deadmau5 record or a Skrillex record, I really enjoy that stuff because, as aggressive sounding as the Skrillex records are, they're still musical, and that's why they have such a broad appeal.
When my mother died, I fell apart. My father wanted to control me. As a consequence, I ran away to America.
We went down into the silent garden. Dawn is the time when nothing breathes, the hour of silence. Everything is transfixed, only the light moves.
Since the model he so faithfully copies is not going to be hung up next to the picture... it is of no interest whether it is an accurate copy of the model.
The painter must give a completely free rein to any feeling or sensations he may have and reject nothing to which he is naturally drawn.
You ask why I'm fascinated by the human figure? As a human animal, I am interested in some of my fellow animals: in their minds and bodies.
How precious a book is in light of the offering, in the light of the one who has the privilege of this offering. The library tells you of this offering.
Architecture appears for the first time when the sunlight hits a wall. The sunlight did not know what it was before it hit a wall.
Even a brick wants to be something. A brick wants to be something. It aspires. Even a common, ordinary brick... wants to be something more than it is. It wants to be something better than it is.
