People who put my paintings on their walls are putting their values on their walls: faith family home a simpler way of living the beauty of nature quiet tranquillity peace joy hope. They beckon you into this world that provides an alternative to your nightly news broadcast.
Maybe I'm old-fashioned. But I remember the beauty and thrill of being moved by Broadway musicals - particularly the endings of shows.
The world is a crazy beautiful ugly complicated place and it keeps moving on from crisis to strangeness to beauty to weirdness to tragedy. The caravan keeps moving on and the job of the longform writer or filmmaker or radio broadcaster is to stop - is to pause - and when the caravan goes away that's when this stuff comes.
Actually I think Art lies in both directions - the broad strokes big picture but on the other hand the minute examination of the apparently mundane. Seeing the whole world in a grain of sand that kind of thing.
I started to make a study of the art of war and revolution and whilst abroad underwent a course in military training. If there was to be guerrilla warfare I wanted to be able to stand and fight with my people and to share the hazards of war with them.
The aesthetic of architecture has to be rooted in a broader idea about human activities like walking relaxing and communicating. Architecture thinks about how these activities can be given added value.
The fact that I even get in Broadway shows is to me still amazing but then to win a Tony was just incredible.
I've been able to go on and have a successful career on Broadway and certainly the last five years in Las Vegas have been amazing.
When you think of what Americans accomplished building these amazing cities and all the good it's done in the world it's kind of disheartening to hear so much hatred of America not just from abroad but internally.
My dad was working abroad in Iraq and he was a doctor. We used to go and visit him in Baghdad off and on. For the first ten years of my life we used to go backwards and forwards to Baghdad so that was quite amazing. I spent a lot of time traveling around the Middle East.