I'm a secretive bastard. I would never let anybody watch me painting... it would be like somebody watching you have sex - painting is that personal to me.

To be interested solely in technique would be a very superficial thing to me.

I dream a lot. I do more painting when I'm not painting. It's in the subconscious.

At 18 I began painting steadily fulltime and at age 20 had my first New York show at the Macbeth Gallery.

I surrendered to a world of my imagination, reenacting all those wonderful tales my father would read aloud to me. I became a very active reader, especially history and Shakespeare.

To me, this was an oxymoron, doing a painting of a dancer. Dancers are always moving.