If I were foolish enough to accept his statement, without any modification, I'd have to feel awful, essentially. All of us are vulnerable to criticism, all of us are susceptible. We're all human. We all need to be loved, approved of, admired. There isn't a single person I know who's immune to that.
Some people are more able to safeguard their sanity than others.
I picked out my favorites, projected them onto plywood, cut out shapes, painted the plywood black, made real light bulbs, installed light bulbs behind the black plywood. And it becomes a scene of what the lights felt like to me, US 1 at night. Before that you were making sculpture environments from blown-up photos. I just did it without thinking about it. I didn't have the strength to do it.