“Every artist has little rules or devices that enables them to move a painting forward. I’m not thinking of great and meaningful exercises of desire, but simple, quotidian, almost mechanical procedures. I mean, one of the strategies that I’ve always used in different permutations is to, as a first step, go to the opposite of what the logical move would be. So if a painting would seem to have a source that is anthropomorphic or organic, you know, start geometrically. If a painting has a source in a city and architecture in the urban, let’s do it with curves and juicy paint running all over the place. And this is not out of perversity, but out of a desire to challenge any kind of received wisdom. In other words, if a city has to be geometric, well, okay, let it prove itself, let it become geometric in the process, in the procedure of thinking about these things. This interests me—looking for the core of things. What is essential? What is at the bottom of it?" 

Thomas Nozkowski, in an interview with John Yau, http://brooklynrail.org/2010/11/art/thomas-nozkowski-with-john-yau