You really get wound together and you're different at the end of it in ways we can't necessarily perceive or calculate. I don't think we have the tools to measure it, but there's definitely a change at the end.

The same thing happened to me in Parma. There I was, practically on my deathbed, thinking, "Hey, look at all the stunning content around me. If I survive, it would be wise to have taken portrait photographs of my caregivers.

…that's what attention sickness means. There are other types of attention sickness too. I mean, the people who are constantly, what Buddhists call hungry ghosts. You can never be satisfied with anything

I remember the first time that I encountered a Joan Mitchell painting and just having this almost like visceral reaction where I didn't really know what I was looking at, but I was just so affected by the energy that it held. For the work to have that kind of emotional resonance…

…you know, I think that my practice is actually, in some ways, my grandmother's practice, in a very different sphere, but this idea of using something, whether it is a flower or technology, to draw people in…

To go back a little bit, my mother called a military recruiter because she was worried that I'd never leave the nest. So, one day out of high school, I came home, and there was a military guy on my porch…

In an age when museums seem to be failing us, in an age where the barrier for entry is always higher, that's not good for the arts. We need a lower cost barrier of entry.

In 2014, after climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro, I suffered a pulmonary embolism and spent a week in the hospital. That sudden confrontation with mortality forced me to pause and question what I truly wanted in life.

As tech increases around us, I take greater joy in the non-tech moments: human intimacy, time in nature, the creative process, quiet, doing things by hand.

There are even illustrations by Indigenous people showing priests and soldiers burning their leaders for refusing to convert. It was an exercise of power, not an exercise of love, as taught by Christ…

It's not meant to have any deep philosophical meaning, but as one carefully observes figures in an environment, things just happen naturally! We begin to ask What are they doing there?  What are they saying or thinking? What is life like in their shoes?

In this exclusive long-form interview, artist Rigoberto González discusses the White House’s targeting of his painting Refugees Crossing the Border Wall into South Texas, exhibited at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery. González reflects on art, censorship, and immigration.