John Currin

the right kind of irritant to make that happen.

Perhaps staying in California, I don't know.

I mean, I always loved to draw, but I think, I'm not sure I would have had the ambition and the sort of the drama that would have been, that I think is maybe required and just the irritant of an unhappiness

can, can, um, make, you know, can be a good thing in that sense.

And so, uh, so I, you know, I, I, you know, in, in many ways, my, my, my, my family was, was, uh, maybe, I mean, maybe

I wouldn't say repressive because, because actually, you know, I talked to my father constantly and, and, uh, um, it wasn't like a silent, uh, you know, uh, um, strict, they were strict, but, but, uh, but not in the, but unlike, unlike anybody else.

So, so, so, uh,

But I guess the thing is with my father, we would talk a lot, but only about

about either physics, he was a physicist, either about things like that, or about politics, or about intellectual things.

And so he was very smart and loved to argue and loved to take a contrary position on anything.

And so I think maybe the...

Maybe the sexual expression maybe was a counterpart to what we talked about.

Maybe that was a counterpart to that.

I think that was what I thought an artist was.

You know, that was my first sort of idea of art was album covers.

Um, I, I actually, um, I had a book, one of my, the first art book I had was, uh, was a book of, on Frank Frazetta, who was, uh, um, famous for, for doing, um, the, these illustrations for like Conan the Barbarian and, and, uh, muscular, you know, muscular savages and, and busty, um,

yet muscular like like weird kind of you know the more i think about it really strangely constructed women but like sexy women in in his case in his sense and um so you know and i remember like i flipped through that book when i was like you know 10 and and imagine i

I'd imagine sort of a weird version of air guitar.

I would imagine a girl looking through this book, and they're my paintings, and she's admiring my paintings or something.

And then I think my second book was like MC Escher.