I love biographies. I read Patti Smith's 'Just Kids.' I'm into that time frame in New York, the '70s and '80s. In art school, I read 'Close to the Knives,' the autobiography of the artist and AIDS activist David Wojnarowicz.
One of the advantages of not going to art school is that you're not taught what you can't do.
I went to an art school in Brooklyn and painted Fine Art, if that's what you'd call it for eight years in New York, until I saw the first underground comics in the East Village Other.
After that I jumped, especially being in art school, to the illustrators.
I'd love to go to art school. I'd love to learn how to draw. I'd love to be fluent in Spanish. I'd like to be a brain surgeon.
I always noticed that in art school, that grief was considered more profound than happiness. But why?
In the 1960s when the recording studio suddenly really took off as a tool, it was the kids from art school who knew how to use it, not the kids from music school. Music students were all stuck in the notion of music as performance, ephemeral. Whereas for art students, music as painting? They knew how to do that.
I had wanted a tape recorder since I was tiny. I thought it was a magic thing. I never got one until just before I went to art school.
James Thurber was an inspiration because his drawings were so primitive. I am self-taught - I didn't go to art school - so I thought when I started doing them, 'If James Thurber can be a cartoonist, I can,' because his stuff is very raw.
Painting is something that requires a lot of time - it's not just one good idea out of art school.
