I had been elected to the National Academy of Design in New York, and one of the requirements was that you give a portrait, a self-portrait of yourself.

Painting to me is constant searching. I can see what I want, but I can't get there, and yet you have to be open enough that if it goes another way, then let it go that way.

Painting is as difficult as brain surgery. It's not that relaxing. But that's the discipline.

Everything I paint is a portrait, whatever the subject.

My interest in painting is recording things. I think of myself as almost a documentary filmmaker... I've gotten into some curious situations.

The danger, I find, is that you can become too formulaic, like some commissioned portrait painters who develop a methodology.

Interesting is when one can produce a picture that is pretty, but with undercurrents. The metaphor that comes to mind is in the poems of Robert Frost.

I'm an odd portrait painter in that I'm not just interested in human faces. I consider almost all of my paintings to be portraits.

The real kiss of death - particularly with my father - is the extraordinary popularity of his work.

For a man, no more beautiful wish has ever found yet than wishing him a life full of kindness!

In the long run every government is the exact symbol of its people with their wisdom and unwisdom.

Our play is not something separate from our spirituality

I'd like to go out for a cocktail... or seven.

How nature loves the incomplete. She knows If she drew a conclusion it would finish her.

I love Michigan, to be honest. I don't think I'd live nowhere else. It's cheap! This is Detroit. A little bit of nothing gets you a lot of something.

You cannot be born and you cannot die because you don't even exist ... in the sense that you think of existence.

The beauty of doing a series is that, over the course of time, it's like peeling an onion. You're able to reveal these layers, more and more. You just don't want to reveal too much, too soon.

LA runs on optimism, enthusiasm and flattery. I think you can go a little bit crazy... It's just too damn sunny in every dimension - weatherwise, socially and professionally.

Not living in L.A. gives me a different perspective. I'm not so caught up in the daily process of self-congratulations that's out there.