From the time I was a little kid I was always drawing—my own comics, tattoos on my friend’s arms, paint-by-numbers and my own paintings and drawings of just about anything and everything. I went to art school, undergrad and grad. When I came out I rented a two-story building in Hoboken before it was chic (my studio had rats the size of cats). Pretty soon I was exhibiting my work, became part of a group known as “eccentric abstraction,” and was successful. But everything changed when I lost almost 10 years of my artwork in a fire. After that, I started making representational paintings (I needed something tangible) and making art about art that already exists. My art is now about icons and narrative, about things that exist and things that should have existed. The great thing about visual art is that you see it—and you can listen to music while you make it!