But trying to be a painter did teach me to look at the world in a very particular way-looking very closely at things, at colors, at how things form themselves in space - and I've always been grateful for that. You have all this space, and you have a figure: what do you do with it? And in a way that's what all art is. How do we find a place for our creatures, or inventions, in this incoherent space into which we're thrown?