Born on September 20th

"In the field of creativity & art, to create is to take a leap of faith into the quiet canvas of your own imagination."

"Art is the expression of our deepest questions, painted in colors that words cannot reach. As a scientist & scholar, this is the foundational truth I have observed."

"Every act of creation begins with a willing heart and the courage to make a mistake."

"It takes a lot of help - nature, friends, family, craftsmen - for me to make what I make."

"I used to kind of go for it, right? Like, I'd be the one who would say, 'All right, there's Kate Moss. I'm going to try to make out with her.'"

"For all the drama we all have with our families and all the tension and hostility, I couldn't have done this without my family. Being the people that they are - they're crazy - made it possible for me to be crazy and to live a lifestyle of my own design."

"I try very hard to handle things equally: ideas, materials, and images."

"It's such a weird self-confidence that an artist has - to conceive of this thing that serves no function and say, 'I'm going to really work hard for it and give it and it's just going to matter to people.' You really have to believe it all on your own."

"All of these mechanisms we have for celebrating are so double-edged. So much sorrow comes out of joy."

"Art class was my thing, but not any other class."

"I'm trying to equalise the world to say there is no high and low."

"A lot of my work is about what's abstract and what's pictorial. Is it bubblegum, or is it an abstract painting using bubblegum? The energy comes from walking that line and watching things dip this way and that."

"It's such a paradox. You come from this place where you want fame; you don't want to be bourgeois, but you want to be successful. You want to be accepted, but you also want to be going against the grain. You want to be on the outside, but you want to be on the inside."

"Art is kind of the lens through which I think about God."

"The different bodies of my work end themselves when there's no more discovery to be had."

"I think that artworks are like these spiritual objects: I think that they have energies and powers beyond what the eye can see."

"I've always been interested in moments of disbelief... I don't know if they possess any magic, but they do have something."

"A lot of my work is about equalizing things and kind of destroying any barrier between what's high and low, or what's deep or what's shallow, complex or simple. I hope I'm ever-changing."

"A lot of my work involves instilling objects with the power of touch - a transference of soul, spirit, energy through actions."

"As opposed to putting too much confidence in myself, or in an image or a scene or a set of brushes, I really want to allow the oil paint to perform, to show me the things that it wants to do, beyond my imagination."

"At the end of the day, you can't have a vision; you have to have a hope. This is where the miracle comes in."

"You always know when something works it's a result of everything firing on all cylinders."

"I miss everything about Chicago, except January and February."

"There is no handbook about how a career is going to go."

"Being able to fantasize for a couple of days at being a rock singer surpassed most things I've done on stage."

"A lot of actors in my age bracket look at being still standing as pretty good."

"I am a normal American."

"'Fatal Vision' was basically the first thing I did on camera."

"You can go out in a good movie and look bad as well."

"I love going to concerts, so that whole environment is something that intrigues me anyway."