discovered is that I’m an image maker, and I don’t care how its made—whether it’s through painting or photography or drawing—I just want to create images.

In the beginning of Photoshop and Illustrator—what became Creative Suite—and to me it looked like another tool, another set of tools. And it fit in well with my photography. The photography had been there to support my art, basically, a way of gathering information and images in order to create better paintings.

I was sort of collaging and I would think, “Oh, I’ll collage this work and then I’ll paint it.” But as I progressed I began to realize that everything was changing: there were different ways of printing the work, and perhaps there were things I could use to develop the work that didn’t involve painting.

I discovered is that I’m an image maker, and I don’t care how its made—whether it’s through painting or photography or drawing—I just want to create images.

You’ve got to do what interests you. And it can’t matter [how popular it is]—maybe it’s not what’s current now, or what’s being celebrated—but sooner or later people will take notice because it’ll have a vibrancy and a truthfulness to it; it is you, it’s you speaking, it’s you painting. So to me, I thought, why fight it? Let’s see how it goes. I have nothing better to do in this life, so let’s just see where it goes, and where it takes me.

If we do everything that’s comfortable, then what we come up with is just kind of a boring, comfortable result.

I look at failure in a different way than a lot of people do: failure is just an opportunity to learn.

With the academic background that I had, I found that I was able to stretch my imagination and stretch my exploration beyond what I thought I was capable of, which was really fascinating to me, and very fulfilling.

When I first started showing the “Indra’s Jewels” work, I had people coming out of the woodwork saying “Who is this guy? What is he doing? Who does he think he is doing this stuff?” and the more they’d find out they’d go “Oh, he was a painter? He taught for more than decade on the university level? He knows what he’s talking about? Oh, well let’s look at it a little closer.