Art is about changing what we see in our everyday lives and representing it in such a way that it gives us hope.

Painting is about the world that we live in. Black men live in the world. My choice is to include them.

If you look at the paintings that I love in art history, these are the paintings where great, powerful men are being celebrated on the big walls of museums throughout the world. What feels really strange is not to be able to see a reflection of myself in that world.

If art can be at the service of anything, it's about letting us see a state of grace for those people who rarely get to be able to be seen that way.

The beauty of art is that it allows you to slow down, and for a moment, things that once seemed unfamiliar become precious to you.

At its best, what art does is, it points to who we as human beings and what we as human beings value. And if Black Lives Matter, they deserve to be in paintings.

Painting has the ability to communicate something about the sitter that gets to his essence.

My work is a contemporary call to arms. It is time to get our mojo back. To rediscover our true north.

My style is in the 21st century. If you look at the process, it goes from photography through Photoshop, where certain features are heightened, elements of the photo are diminished. There is no sense of truth when you're looking at the painting or the photo or that moment when the photo was first taken.