I discovered that the patterns of my age wrinkles resembled the rhythms of my heroes whom I admired like Cezanne, Picasso, Braque. Fine art is valued not for its resemblance to an imitation of reality, but for its penetration into what the artist believes, or what is behind the look of reality. Or all of the above, which equals an art work. So that we value a Cezanne painting of his favorite Mount St. Victoire, because it's a set of geometric lines, short, choppy, that are built in a rhythmic pattern that give you an idea of the coherence of nature. I suspect there's a reason that museums collect paintings.
People always say that art is non-functional.
Art functions to help us stumble around and understand our existence. I think a minute of existence is miraculous, and extraordinary. You have in this retrospective a number of homages to those favorite artists, including these drawings which are very Rembrandt-y. I'm self-deprecating I guess, about my insistence about making illusions of depth. But I insist that these drawings I make are quite connected with sculpture.