I can be inspired by anything. It can be from an artist, I love Georgia O'Keefe, de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, Lichtenstein, Koons- I love them all. I can be inspired by an artist, a dream, something that I pass by, I was even inspired by a commercial! A commercial of whale war- I was so sad that people were killing whales to extinction, so I made a painting of that. So I can really be inspired by a lot of things.
I am not a follower of Monet. I am not an admirer or follower of De Kooning. I am not an action painter. I am not an abstract expressionist. I am not younger or older. I will not take my hat off to any other artist living or dead in all the world. I know this.
Willem de Kooning paintings are a language to be learned. When they were first shown, they were ridiculed as being just drips and splatters and splashes. You had to learn how to read them.