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1955, I entered the California School of Fine Arts.
A friend of mine talked me into taking the painting class that summer
taught by a man, Elmer Bischoff,
and I took that class and it was marvelous.
And he was a tremendous teacher and I became
seriously interested in painting.
He got us started by
letting us make a lot of mistakes, and I realized
I didn't have to draw academically.
I decided in ‘65
that I was bored with what I was doing, and there was a lot more to be learned.
So I stopped painting heavy, expressionistic paintings
and did a lot of studying,
became my own teacher, a student of myself.
The gallery flipped out, of course—I was also showing in L.A.
at that time—and
I said, “the hell with it.” And I just went underground
for three years exploring and studying
these new areas, painting new pictures.
Self-portraits, whether they were conscious
or unconscious, they were still all self-portraits.
And they were based upon what kind of facts from your life?
Facts and fantasies.
Facts such as travel,
everyday situations, lots of scenes
which I still use of San Francisco.
Well, I've been swimming in the bay
most of my life,
and I guess about five or six, about six years ago now,
have gone on these amateur competitive swims, which are across
the Golden Gate Bridge from Alcatraz and various piers out in the bay here.
And I was very nervous about doing that swim from Alcatraz.
It’s a tough swim.
It’s unpredictable, can be rough as hell.
So anyway,
it was really on my mind and I did a painting before the swim,
and then after the swim, which I didn't make.
In fact, a bunch of us,
all seventeen of us, got pulled out of that swim, almost drowned.
A big freighter came through in the middle of the swim, caused a tremendous wake.
So then after the swim, I painted a number of paintings
because I couldn't say everything I wanted to say in one, describing the situation.
And the woman— which are self-portraits—
the woman most of the time is wearing a dress that has boats on it,
freighters, very stylized kind of Art Deco-type freighters.
But that's the ship that came through.
Well, I like the duality of having a very cozy situation,
such as a living room, a woman standing by a fireplace,
and then have a framed, enclosed picture, picture of a picture
of all that violence
that went on out there in the bay.
And that kind of paradox
interested me a lot.
I think maybe that's the only way I could deal with it.
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I'll use anything to
try and get what I want, anything at all.
In that, a painting of a couple dancing
and there's a piece of material
cut out, pasted on,
glued on, which shows—
which is used as her dress, the female’s dress.
And that came about
because I painted that dress
maybe fifty times and I didn't like it
and it was sloppy and wet
and I didn't want to wait for it to dry.
I couldn't scrape it down anymore.
And it was just a mess.
And I said, “The hell with it.
I'm just going to cover it up.”
So I had some material laying around and I just cut out the
shape of the dress and glued it on.
I really liked it after I did that,
but I did it out of frustration.
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I really feel that I paint
about the human condition.
Or, I hope I do. That's what I try and do.
That can be thoughts, feelings, ideas, hopefully all together.
Sometimes a little more one side than the other, but
things that we all experience or think about or dream about
or hope for, and just knowing that
if one can pick up on that—
—I know I certainly do looking at pictures,
I can identify with their space,
because it's the same—
more or less at various times—
the same kind of space I've been in.
And it makes me feel not quite so crazy
and part of a larger issue,
which is
consciousness.
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