Best advice you’ve been given • Advice usually comes from doing and making, taking creative risks, the process is then the most potent teacher.

Goals/Aspirations • To be an extraordinary art teacher, as it is most spiritually sound to practice being of service to one another.

Favorite artist • Lately the list includes de Kooning, Diebenkorn, Schiele, Dove, Sammy Peters and Jenny Saville. I’m drawn to the integrity, directness, honesty and the substantial “soul” embedded in their work.

What are you reading • Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer and Buddhist periodicals

Hope to learn how to • Be more consistently compassionate, sensual, awake, and openly passionate.

You spend a lot of time thinking about • Nature, my two sons, my relationship with my wife, painting, teaching, writing, being grateful and sex.

Favorite musical artist • Sonic Youth, Radiohead, Built to Spill, Buke & Gase, Interpol, Beck, Spoon, Miles Davis, John Cage (prepared piano pieces)

What do you do when not creating art • Fathering, teaching, cleaning, packing lunches, singing, writing lyrics, brushing my teeth, driving, getting angry, pulling carrots from the garden, daydreaming, listening, fixing something, kissing.