Color field painting and minimalism appear on the surface to be touchpoints for you, but I feel you have been able to develop a visual language and voice all your own. That said, who are some of the artists who inspired you coming up? 

I grew up frequently visiting the Albright-Knox Gallery in Buffalo. I came to know and admire De Kooning, Rauschenberg, Rothko, Pollock, Rothenberg, and Noland there. But also the Pop and Minimalist artists like Warhol, Marisol, Segal, Judd, Andre, Kelly, and Flavin, among others. I was always taught that you must find your own voice as an artist and that to have anything to say, you had to have lived some life. So I never aimed to have an active career in my 20s. I spent quite of bit of time in my 20s dealing with depression and addiction, so I had my hands full. But I was also developing as an artist. I went to grad school (to Tyler in Philadelphia) when I was 27 and had Stanley Whitney and Dona Nelson as my professors. And they taught me a lot about painting. Not what to paint but how a painter is. Stanley would talk about confidence. And Dona taught me how to get to a place in a painting where it could stand on its own and be good.

What are some of your other inspirations and references?

I’m drawn to 60’s Laurel Canyon music like Crosby, Stills, and Nash. Grunge and 90’s rock like Nirvana and Green Day. And the Beastie Boys somehow feel like family, though I don’t know them. I also got heavily into Kanye’s Life of Pablo.

In Watermelon Sugar by Richard Brautigan is one of my favorite books. I first found it in a used bookshop in San Francisco because I loved the cover. I love Joan Didion and strangely have ended up living next door to her famous house on Franklin Avenue in Hollywood. My terrace overlooks what was once her tennis courts but is now a huge vegetable garden belonging to the Japanese spiritual society that now owns her house and believes in healing through natural agriculture.