All my artistic response comes from American things, and I guess I've always had a weakness for heroic imagery.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I appear to be drawn to iconic characters and what they reflect back to our cultures.
I think that in Sweden and a lot of European countries, there's this whole mythology of the wounded artist: that you can't really do any great art unless you're suffering.
I begin a book with imagery, more than I do with an idea or a character. Some kind of poetic image.
All of the trials and tribulations from personal to the artist. It shows that I'm human. People see the glamorous stuff, but they don't see the background.
For much of America, the all-American values depicted in Norman Rockwell's classic illustrations are idealistic. For those of us from Vermont, they're realistic. That's what we do.
I will never permit myself to give in to American taste and lower the standards of art.
As a child, I was always drawn to heroic characters. I decided I wanted to act when I realised that Superman and all those gangsters and Indians were just real people in costume.
I've had the thought that a person's 'artistic vision' is really just the cumulative combination of whatever particular stances he has sincerely occupied during his creative life - even if some of those might appear contradictory.
America tends to worship the modest talent because it doesn't put us in an uncomfortable position vis-a-vis the artist.
I probably spent the first 20 years of my life wanting to be as American as possible. Through my 20s, and into my 30s, I began to become aware of how so much of my art and architecture has a decidedly Eastern character.