How many hours of creative work do you think you do in a day?

Every day, I’m super into it. I need to paint. If I go away for a couple weeks, I’ll just draw. It’s like a must for my mental health. I would have to say that I’ve been all-in on painting since I was younger, and I realized that it was because of a lot of fear that it would all go away. That’s not how I want to paint in the future. The pressure and psychology of that setup isn’t totally right. I would like to build bodies of work outside the calendar schedule of art fairs and shows for a little while. I love painting, and I think I can paint without having a giant carrot in front of me. I don’t think that I’m the best at painting, and I want to get better at it.

What’s the first piece of art you ever made?

The first painting I really cared about was probably when I was a teenager, maybe 13 or 14 years old.

What’s the worst studio you ever had?

The freezing-cold basement of my parents’ house on Martha’s Vineyard. Winter of 2002.

What’s the first work you ever sold? For how much?

I sold a painting after college for $1,000, before grad school.

When you start a new piece, where do you begin? What’s the first step?

I think there’s a certain amount of avoidance. I like to have things sit around for a while before it’s go time. I find a photograph that I like, and then I usually make drawings. Maybe half the time I paint from the drawings and the other half from photographs. I use the photo for the structure of the painting; I project out different shapes, trace it out, mix the colors and build an image, like a flat map, and then I paint all the details on top. I like to have things just starting and just finishing and everywhere in between. I like to wake up and have choices to gravitate to.