There's a team of filmmakers who follow me in the streets when I'm finding these models, to give me a sense of legitimacy to a casual stranger. This ….

Is it the responsibility of the colored artist or the ethnic artist to create works that are designed to exist in opposition to a certain political s….

There's quite obviously the desire to open the rule sets that allow for inclusion or disclusion. I think that my hope would be that my work set up ce….

I think that gave rise to the type of practice that I - that I do now. I think it was informed by a very Marxist almost "use-value"-driven investigat….

I'd like to walk that fine line between the authentic artist self and the manufactured artist self. I'd like to exist outside of a set of expectation….

I would imagine that what you try to do is to - is to be as sensitive to the environment that surrounds you as possible. As you see, my work has beco….

Mel [Bochner] sets a very high standard. He expects only the best and most thoughtful and rigorous examinations, not only of the history of art but y….

There was no image of the other biological half of myself. And as an artists, as a - as an - as a portraitist, the look of who you are was radically ….

One of the weirdest things that happened to artists and art criticism was this moment when everyone got cynical and stopped believing in the ability ….

On the contrary, my desire is that the viewer sees the background coming forward in the lower portion of the canvas, fighting for space, demanding pr….

There is no pedestrian culture [in South Central Los Angeles]..

What came out of that was an intense obsession with status anxiety. So much of these portraits are about fashioning oneself into the image of perfect….

Whereas I remember being in Dakar, in Senegal, where I have my third studio, and street casting, and I remember looking at the faces of the young men….

I think that one of the questions that I asked of myself in later years was to this point of the political directive..

I studied shades, textures by painting after the Old Masters, the classical European paintings, as part of my educational process..

I have been painting white people for much longer in my life than I have done for colored people..

At age 20 I went to go find my father in Nigeria. And after much toil, I finally figured out exactly where he was. And there's something about seeing….

Usually I bring very attractive women with me to excite interest. I mean, it's a type of, like, strangers-with-candy situation..

In some way they are all self-portraits, but I think I know what you mean by asking this - I would say, it is too idealistic to paint yourself..

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 r….

Just so [becoming a chef ] that I could support my art habit. You know? I mean, this is - this is something where you've been literally given an oppo….