Cy Gavin

We'd take these books out that were probably from the 60s.

And a lot of them were in black and white, which was annoying.

But you could still see that there was so much intention.

And I didn't understand the underpinnings of these societies at all.

I would read it what I could, but I was more interested in how they were made.

And they were often on wood.

And that was interesting to me, too.

I looked at everything.

I wasn't specifically Flemish painting.

I looked at everything.

I thought that it had to do something.

And I think that is not how I feel now.

I think that like what I thought was that these functional objects, which back then, especially like cost so much money and also time and labor to make the materials, they had to do something and often had to be funded by someone to do that thing.

And it wasn't, and this is not my objective either, to be expressive, but it was often with an end role that feels functional in a society.

And I think it took a very long time to unburden myself from that.

And also why when I was...

maybe like 30 or something, I never saw this work as being art necessarily, so much as like a sort of skill, something that had a function.

And like, you know, like paint someone's dog that died and be like, oh my God, this person had a real response to this because it's meaningful to them.

And that was hugely gratifying and also like not art in my mind.

I don't know.