Tyler Green talks to painter Joyce Pensato on the occasion of the exhibition Joyce Pensato: I Killed Kenny on view at the Santa Monica Museum of Art through August 17, 2013.

Pensato discusses her working process and looking at Franz Kline and de Kooning as well as her interest in cartoon characters as subject matter. Pensato remarks on her focus on the eyes as the "soul of the image" and the fact that the characters are the already an "abstraction of a figure – it already goes into an abstraction… it's a model… Mickey Mouse or Felix the Cat. Yes, it looks like Felix the Cat but I want to make it my own, take it apart and put it back together with my own voice…" She adds that "the Batmen are the most abstract, because there's no eyes or nose – the mask and that's it."