I always wanted to paint Obama and his family, but now onstage the evening he was reelected, as photographed for the New York Times for its front page that next day. For a show I had on the eve of his first election, I had painted a picture of him in front of the capital, and used it for my poster invite (some conservatives called Derek to take them off his mailing list—forever!), and was so happy he won. For this show—My American Dream—this is the only "appropriated" image in the exhibition, but its so amazing that we now live in the future, and the best president of my life is actually a reality—I used to ask students, when teaching notions of ideology, what the American Dream was—bringing up "can anyone grow up to be president" which of course back in the day didn’t seem true, but now it does… (2012)