Kehinde Wiley

Artists should be able to thrive and allow their ideas to flourish as much as those in biotechnology or finance.

I know how young black men are seen. They're boys - scared little boys, oftentimes. I was one of them. I was completely afraid of the Los Angeles Police Department.

One of the things that has inspired me so much is knowing that I felt like I could never measure up.

If you look at the paintings that I love in art history, these are the paintings where great, powerful men are being celebrated on the big walls of museums throughout the world. What feels really strange is not to be able to see a reflection of myself in that world.

My sexuality is not black and white. I'm a gay man who has occasionally drifted. I am not bi. I've had perfectly pleasant romances with women, but they weren't sustainable. My passion wasn't there. I would always be looking at guys.

I need to open a restaurant, a big soul food restaurant in Beijing!

Art is about changing what we see in our everyday lives and representing it in such a way that it gives us hope.

I think my life has been transformed by the ability to take things that exist in the world and look at them more closely. I think that's what art does at its best: it allows us to slow down.

Painting from life is a completely different monster, which I like. But because I've been painting from photography for so long, I've learned my best moves from photography.

The performance of black American identity feels very different from actually living in a black body. There's a dissonance between inside and outside.

What I try to do is defy expectations in terms of boundaries, whether it is high or low art, pop culture, or fine-art culture. My work is about reconciling myriad cultural influences and bringing them into one picture.

There's something really cool about taking oily coloured paste and pushing it around with these hairy sticks and making something that looks like you. That's the magic of painting.