Routines are important to artists because they provide a layer of protection from the randomness of daily life. My bedroom closet is full of Levi’s button-fly jeans, a few dozen black Banana Republic T-shirts, a black belt, black Nike ankle socks, and several pairs of black shoes. I never have to think about what to wear. My morning routine is ironclad. I walk my kids to school at 8:16 a.m. and then hit the gym for twenty-five minutes before meeting my buddies for oatmeal and coffee. Diner culture is alive and well in New York. Every morning, I see the same people: opera stars, actors, writers, painters, and travelers. Despite our diverse backgrounds, we have two things in common: we have mornings free and seem to be hungry at the same time.
Two of my favorite words in the English language, besides “sheet cake,” are “communal table.” I have an inner ring of close friends and a large outer ring of acquaintances whom I see on social occasions, but a diner provides that all-important middle layer—not exactly close friends, but friendly faces.
I get to the studio by ten, stretch, and spend the first hour on paperwork and correspondence. I rarely employ assistants but do everything myself. One of the reasons that I became a painter is because I’m a terrible collaborator; as the adage goes, “A camel is a horse designed by a committee.” Lunch is at noon. When a fruit smoothie won’t satisfy my hunger, I order food delivered to my studio—usually the same meal for several years until I burn out and never eat it again. I ate so much brick-oven pizza from one joint on Sixth Avenue that they asked if they could put my face on their T-shirts. I never ate there again. My favorite foods to order are Indian and Thai. The delivery guys all know me by name and love to comment on paintings in progress.
My one-thousand-square-foot studio is in a tenstory former printing building in the flower district. It has fifteen-foot-high ceilings and giant north-facing windows under which sits my desk with two computer monitors, a lamp, and piles of paperwork. I prefer consistent light to natural light for painting. I use hundred- watt flood bulbs because I want the pictures to look like they will in a gallery. Music is always playing, and my tastes range from chamber music (Joseph Haydn, Béla Bartók, Gustav Mahler, Luigi Boccherini),
1980s heavy metal (Judas Priest), and jazz (Modern Jazz Quartet, Shirley Horn, and Ben Webster) to the truck-driving songs of artists like Buck Owens or Red Simpson. I also listen to local talk radio (Brian Lehrer and Leonard Lopate), audiobooks, and a steady diet of podcasts, especially Penn Jillette’s Sunday School, Gilbert Gottfried’s Amazing Colossal Podcast, Norm McDonald Live, Here’s the Thing with Alec Baldwin, and Marc Maron’s WTF. I am also obsessed with archived interviews of Tiny Tim on The Howard Stern Show from the 1990s. Those conversations are pure poetry. Herbert Khaury (Tiny Tim) was incapable of lying, painfully polite, and didn’t have a cynical bone in his body. He wore no armor and had no filter. I like that.
Regardless of whether it’s Bryan Ferry or Terry Gross, sound is just electronic wallpaper that provides a meter that I unconsciously tap into. Having played drums for twenty years, I see and apply color percussively. Painting is rhythm made visible.