“The narrative oftentimes is that everything that comes out of the hood...” — Mark Bradford Quote

The narrative oftentimes is that everything that comes out of the hood is 'real,' and so I thought, 'I'll base it on the absurd, the not real. I'll twist the idea of real on its head and see if I can get away with it. I'll make paintings that come not from a place but through an abstract gaze.'

Generally, when I tell people I'm a painter, they ask me if I have a card: 'Yes, we'd like this room in this color.' I still might get cards that say 'Mark Bradford. Painter.'

When I was thirteen, I was in a supermarket with my mother, and for no reason at all, I picked up a science-fiction book at the checkout stand and started reading it. I couldn't believe I was doing that, actually reading a book. And, man, it opened up a whole new thing. Reading became the sparkplug of my imagination.

In North America, what happens often is that they put race before nationhood. Everyone here is Hispanic-American, Chinese-American, African-American. But really, we're just North Americans of all these different descents. The only time I notice North Americans becoming national is when a war happens or a crisis happens.

I don't want any of my records to sound like one style throughout. That's why I choose different grooves and songs: tunes that are sensitive and slow as well as pieces that are abstract and fast. The approach I want to take with my records is to give the listener a variety of grooves, concepts, and composers.

While massive datasets may feel very abstract, they are intricately linked to physical place and human culture. And places, like people, have their own individual character and grain.

You have to have the time to feel sorry for yourself in order to be a good abstract expressionist.

I think about the structure, sure. I think about what's going to happen, and how it's going to happen, and the pace. But I think if I stop to think about it in an abstract sense, I feel very daunted. I just try to enter into the story and feel my way through it. It's a very murky, intuitive way of going about it.