Michelle Obama is extraordinary, but she is also the kind of woman that exists in a way that is - she's a hundred percent relatable to all kinds of people, all genders all around the world.

The people I choose as models have a quality that seems to contain the past, the present, and the future all at once. It's hard to explain. I can look at 100 people in a room but only find it in one person.

My mother was willing to support art as a summer program for me. She never supported it as a career decision until I won the National Gallery Portrait Competition.

I want my portraits to create a space where blackness can breathe.

As a longtime fan of talk radio, I'm very worried about the low opinion that conservative hosts and callers have of the American artist. Art is portrayed as a scam, a rip-off and snow job pushed by snobbish elites.

In the theater, you go from point A to point Z, building your performance as the evening progresses. You have to relinquish that control on a film.

As an artist, what I’m looking for isn’t the answers but the questions. Art saved my life, and I’m sure that it could save the lives of many people. If it’s not art, find your place. But never give up."

The tantalizing discomfort of perplexity is what inspires otherwise ordinary men and women to extraordinary feats of ingenuity and creativity; nothing quite focuses the mind like dissonant details awaiting harmonious resolution.