John Currin

the time, basically from the time I was a, I was a kid.

So, so, you know, early seventies, uh, mid mid seventies and, and, uh,

there's something about those scenarios and the, and the faces and the expressions and the hair and, um, even the ugly clothes, like I, I, I find transcended.

I can just, those, I don't know, they, they seem to be endlessly applicable to, to almost like mythical creatures.

So the clothes sadly come from, you know, double knit pantsuits and stuff from those, from those catalogs.

Well, I mean, I don't remember saying that, but it's, I guess, apt.

In many ways, when the Sears catalogs would arrive, I would, of course, as a kid, I'd immediately turn to the lingerie and, you know, underwear section to look at the, you know.

And the funny thing is in that section, instead of like bright smiles and everything, everybody's very contemplative and sort of meditative in their underwear.

But I guess, I don't know, you know, it was, for better or worse, it's always been, you know, that's been a,

Big part of my work is sort of sexual themes, I guess.

Maybe the reason it persists is because I don't completely understand it.

Not particularly.

I wouldn't be comfortable talking about sex with my parents, certainly, but it wasn't

you know, overtly forbidden or, or, or they were not religious, um, for instance.

So, uh, I just think it's something I thought about since I was, you know, four or five.

I, you know, some of my, I remember there's a, there's a painting in my show actually of two women seen from behind nude women.

And, um, the one, the one on the right,

has a kind of a well-defined back.

And I remember when I was a child in Santa Cruz, California, so I would have been, you know, maybe six or seven, there was this girl, a teenage girl, and she would mow the lawn with like a hand, you know, like a, and she would always wear a halter top.

And I would look, just stare at her back.