ON SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

My family’s here. I’ve lived here most of my life, so most of my work is done here. But I have been traveling a lot and I do a lot of on-site installation work. Some of my pieces travel with me and I work on them in different locations, then they come here. Or they’re started here and finished on-location where they’re going to be on display.

ON UPCOMING RESIDENCY

I leave on Tuesday for Jackson Hole, Wyoming — I’ll be working there for a few weeks in a residency. I’m excited to see what will come out of working in that environment. Most of my work is done here in my home. It’s going to be different; it’s my first residency. This will be the first time I’ll be traveling just to do art in a different location. Because normally I’m working for a museum or gallery and I’m in that space making the artwork work.

This is like, you go there just to draw and be inspired. So this will be my first time where I’m really going to be able to do that. To start and work on drawings in that location that are not meant for sale or to be shown or anything but just to be worked on.

Residency is something a lot of artists do and I never even tried one, you know? And I was like, wow. So I’m kind of — I’m going forward but I’m also kind of going back a little bit, too.

Trying to experience as many things as I can to help me grow, and to see other things. I’m trying to experience as much as I can.

I don’t usually work on one thing at a time so I’m bringing a big tube with me on the airplane. I’ll have one drawing that’s partially started, one that’s about half-way done and then I’ll be starting a new one there.

I like to work on different stages at once. It helps me focus. And the days that I’m not feeling super inspired, I can work on some of the busy work on some of the others, and then go back to the new one and really put in that super-high energy in the beginning.

ON LIMITING NEW IDEAS

Sometimes that’s my big problem. I have too many things in my head. I sit in my studio and I’m like, “Oh my God, my head’s going to explode. They’re all yelling at me to work on them.” And I do take things down and put them away and just say, “That’s it. You have to go.”

The one that’s in the tube is the one that was making my head explode in my studio that I had took down and put in a tube. So I’m taking it with me to Wyoming to hope that it will do the opposite there.

ON PRE-PLANNING

My drawings aren’t usually planned ahead of time. I kind of start by adding the large figures and work out those main compositional elements. And then I come in with the smaller stories and the little details that kind of add to it.

So there’s a lot of give-and-take in the beginning; I erase a lot. A lot, a lot, a lot. Probably more than I draw for the first couple of weeks working on a large-scale drawing. I’m starting now to — I don’t really do sketches but what I do is I write down ideas that I have so they don’t limit me to like a little sketch.