At Sarah Lawrence, I realized that everybody was already what they were going to be. The painters were painting, the writers writing, the dancers dancing. And nobody wore any makeup. The art was uppermost.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
If the audience knew what they wanted then they wouldn't be the audience, they would be the artist.
I was exposed to the arts, but there was no one in my family who was an artist.
To be given the reins of creativity is a beautiful thing when you're used to just showing up to a casting and standing there having clothes put on you.
I wanted to dress the woman who lives and works, not the woman in a painting.
Many of the writers I admire - Melville, Dickinson, Kafka - were virtually invisible during their lifetimes. Art, I think, often has to dance around in the void.
I think people would actually be surprised by what we put out. Unfortunately the shadow that the original founders cast was that they were just artists that can't write books so people swept the whole of Image with that paintbrush.
As an actress, I think it's important to look back and realize that we aren't always quite as original as we think we are. There's this grand, textured history for us over the last 100 years of incredible writers, directors, and performers.
I look at the careers of people I'm standing on the shoulders of. People like Lena Horne, Ella Fitzgerald, Sammy Davis Jr., and Sarah Vaughan. These are icons I wanted to emulate, and I feel like they've been holding me up for quite a long time.
Makeup ignites a psychological transformation of both the wearer and the observer. My paintings sought to locate the subject of art within the manipulation of that altered predisposition.
When I left the Royal College, I decided I would only make paintings that I would want to look at myself, that felt close to my life.