I adored the Yeah Yeah Yeahs when I was a teenager and that was equally because of their music as well as because of Karen O, her onstage presence, her peculiar style. I used to mimic her strange hand movements I saw in their music videos. I used to make drawings of her in my notebooks. The first time I saw YYYs live, when I was 17, the crowd erupted in roaring cheers as Karen O slowly moved her hands in a semi-circle in front of her, same as in the Maps music video, and it seemed to me almost as a form of incantation or ritual. I went on to portray her many times in my work, as a high school student, as an art school student and as a more mature artist. I am fascinated by her musical talent as much as by how she can combine such strange and awkward fashions and antics into such hugely cool results. A couple of my portrayals of her, when I was a teenager, even garnered her appraisal online, which was an enormous turning point for me as an artist. When I set out to portray her and her hands for this new series of work, wanting to capture those movements, that strangeness, I realized just how nourishing, how important an inspiration her creativity and persona have been for me.