I have no real training in the history of fine art or furniture; my eye just works by proportions. I react intuitively. In London, it's all about color because the weather is so gray, and in that cold light they look beautiful.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
In Boston, I developed my eye from the drawing. In Paris, I was fascinated by what my eye saw in the way that Paris is built, its 'measure.'
Once you learn to look at architecture not merely as an art more or less well or more or less badly done, but as a social manifestation, the critical eye becomes clairvoyant.
I started taking pictures when I was around 10, so I have been inadvertently been training my eye for it for years. Traveling gave me a ton of practice as well, and the ability, once you learn to properly manipulate and capture light and freeze any moment in time for safe keeping, has always fascinated me.
In the 19th century the anatomy of the eye was known in great detail and the sophisticated mechanisms it employs to deliver an accurate picture of the outside world astounded everyone who was familiar with them.
I try to give people a different way of looking at their surroundings. That's art to me.
So I try to re-invent my own eye every time I tackle a new subject. But it's hard, because everybody has style. You can't help it.
I'm inspired by looking at art, by looking at precedent. Looking is what you have to do if you want to make things, so you develop a critical eye.
I've been a model for 15 years, and I've been on 'Top Chef' for eight seasons, and before that I had other cooking shows, so I've learned a thing or two about how to camouflage certain areas and how to draw the eye to a preferable area of the body.
I look at everything in an artistic way.
I think having a dispassionate eye is a good way of making art. When you don't know the structures of a place, you are unencumbered.