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The studio is on the second floor of a building that has outlived three of its neighbors. There is no sign. Inside, the light comes from a single north window, and everything else — the brushes in coffee tins, the stacked panels, the small bowl of pigment — arranges itself around that light.
You have been working in this room for a long time. Does it still surprise you?
Every morning I come up the stairs and I do not know what is going to happen. That is not a romantic statement. It is a practical one. If I knew, I would not need to come up the stairs.
"If I knew what the painting was going to be, I would not need to make it. The not-knowing is the job."
How did you learn to tolerate that uncertainty?
Badly, at first. In my twenties I wanted every piece to justify itself. I would finish something and immediately need someone to tell me it was worth the time. That is a very tiring way to work, and it makes the work smaller, because you only attempt what you already know you can defend.
What changed was a stretch of about two years where nothing sold and nobody was watching. It was frightening, and it was the most useful period of my life. I learned that the practice could hold itself up.
On teaching, and being taught
I have taught for most of my adult life, and I have never once walked into a classroom feeling that I was the only person in the room with something to offer. Younger artists ask questions I have stopped asking. They do not know yet which questions are supposed to be embarrassing.
What do you tell an artist at the beginning?
Protect the hours. Everything else — the shows, the recognition, the letters — arrives on a schedule you do not control. The hours are the only part of the arrangement you can actually defend.
"Protect the hours. Everything else arrives on a schedule you do not control."
Is there work you still want to make?
There is a painting I have been circling for eleven years. I have started it four times. I do not think I am ready, and I have made peace with the possibility that I never will be. But I would like to be in the room with it again.
This interview has been condensed and edited. It is sample content prepared for design review.
