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Cleveland is the place I grew up and lived much of my adult life, so it will always be a part of my soul.

When I was quite young, I dreamed of being a painter.

In the summer of 1988, my father took me up to look at the remains of our home, the dream house that he'd built. It was my first time since our family left four years earlier. Political and obscene graffiti covered the half-torn walls. There was no ceiling and surprisingly no floor: the parquet, the stone, the marble, all looted.

I've dreamed landscapes for years, and my dreams play an enormous role in my work. In fact, when I first started doing landscapes I felt insecure about painting in this style, and the dreams were like positive omens for me, and I've done a few paintings that were exact replicas of images that came to me in dreams.

At first, my bedroom had flowers and yellow walls and huge furniture in plastic that was orange and green - and furry green bed cover and everything. Then, I think the day I turned 13, I painted the walls black and put Kurt Cobain on the wall and just changed everything into a dark theme.

I had a lot of romanticised ideas of what Detroit was like, but I didn't get there until I was 30, and it was very different than I had imagined it.

I think about architecture all the time. That's the problem. But I've always been like that. I dream it sometimes.

I got to see the American Dream unfold in my living room.

I never paint dreams or nightmares. I paint my own reality.