I am fascinated by the idea of employing beautiful images as a device to convey something extremely disturbing in an apparently harmless way.
There are times when being scandalous or provocative can help bring focus to issues of major concern.
I think that laughter and death are closely related: comedy is the quintessential human reaction to the fear of death. It's probably linked with the fact that we are the only animals who know we must die.
I don't like the idea of having a public image. In the end, you have an image of someone, which becomes true whether it is or not.
If you are a plumber, there is an objective way to establish whether you put together a great piping system or not. Art is a bit more slippery than that.
Art is about forgetting all these feelings, good and bad, and trying to understand what acts will last longer, which symbols will remain in history. It's a question of perspective: The further you get from the past, the more concrete and plausible it seems.
