It’s a funny contradiction because when we started playing instruments as kids, the thing we didn’t want to do was jam. We wanted to have an idea. We wanted structure. Jamming was like this way of sharing the spotlight, where everyone got their own solo, every individual got their own moment to shine. When we were growing up, that’s how we thought of it. Eventually we embraced this more freeform approach. I wouldn’t call it jamming, but maybe it’s more about exploring.

When I was this young assistant at the University of Groningen my responsibility was for four beds, or rather the patients in four beds. That was all I had to do. And, one of these patients was a young man, 22 years old, who slowly and miserably died from renal failure. He became blind, he vomited, and it was a miserable death. And I, as a very, very young physician, had to tell his mother, in a black dress and a little white cap like the farmers have, that her only son was going to die. I couldn’t do a damn thing about it. So, I began to think, “If I could just every day remove as much urea as this boy creates, which is about 20 grams, then the boy could live.” Well, he died, but I began to work on that.

It’s completely spatial. I follow Graham on that a lot. I really think that painting is about space and proportions and where things go; it’s what painting is. Form, if it isn’t the right color, it is not in the right place. And you know you can actually change the relationships a lot by changing the color a little. Yesterday, something happened in my studio. I realized that new things come to you all the time when you work in art. I had forgotten that if Graham wanted to make something slightly off-white, he used violet instead of greying it, and it’s really good. So, last night I remembered that, and the painting worked out.

To be honest, it’s always different. I never know what I’m going to do when I get a new project! Sometimes I’m going to get a bunch of trace paper, I’ll make a silhouette and then just go through variations until I hit something nice. Maybe we put those sketches up on the wall. Or maybe I’m going to print the full-scale silhouette of this thing, or I’ll do it in 3D modeling… And on and on. The thing that’s consistent when I am in creation mode is that I have to be pretty particular about my schedule. I have to stay spiritually in tune. Exercise is really important for me because truth be told, I can have a lot of nervous energy that comes out at the beginning of any project, like, I have no idea how I’m gonna do this one! I don’t know what the process is going to be for this one, I don’t know how long it’s gonna take.

Working in 3D environments allows me to have a lot more latitude in how I create my projects, but it actually creates a much harder editing process. Since entire scenes are scripted and key-framed you can endlessly revisit and modify everything. In a sort of post-photographic sense, it’s like having a perpetual decisive moment. I’m working with virtual cameras and lighting quite often, and it is a major challenge to pare down the process to best fit the goals of the project.