Tetragrammaton with Rick Rubin - Ed Ruscha

Episode Date: August 13, 2025

Ed Ruscha is an artist whose six-decade career spans painting, photography, printmaking, film, and book art. His first artist’s book, Twentysix Gasoline Stations—featuring 26 photographs taken along Route 66—marked the beginning of his ongoing exploration of the interplay between image and text, while later works such as Tulsa Slut and The End expanded this approach across different media. He draws inspiration from magazines, comics, and newspapers, experimenting with inventive materials like blackberry juice, chocolate, and gunpowder to explore the legibility and permanence of words. His work has been featured in major exhibitions including, most recently, ED RUSCHA / NOW THEN at MoMA in 2023 and LACMA in 2024, along with solo shows in Gagosian galleries worldwide. ------ Thank you to the sponsors that fuel our podcast and our team: LMNT Electrolytes https://drinklmnt.com/tetra Use code 'TETRA' ------ Athletic Nicotine https://www.athleticnicotine.com/tetra Use code 'TETRA' ------ Squarespace https://squarespace.com/tetra Use code 'TETRA' ------ Sign up to receive Tetragrammaton Transmissions https://www.tetragrammaton.com/join-newsletter

Tetragrammaton. And I sort of identified with grapes of wrath in a little bit because I came from Oklahoma. Yeah. You know, Bible built, Chim Crow laws and all that. But we had a little bit of a progressive introduction to world of music through Clyde McFadder and, you know, Lieber Stoller and those kind of people that are going to need an ocean of calamine lotion. Yeah. Yeah. It's like prototype rock and roll, sort of. Yeah. What do they say? Rocket 88, you know, Jackie Branson.

They say Rocket 88 was the very first rock record. I don't know if it's true, but it's interesting. I don't either, but I just take it as what a lot of people think. But we listen to music like that, and it was a little bit dark, and, you know, parents didn't like us for that. classic kind of parent-child growing up type thing and then I wanted to want to leave and go to some place where I could go to an art school and I thought about New York or Chicago, Kansas City maybe or L.A. And I picked this because I had visited here before and New York too cold. Yeah. Chicago too cold. Yeah.

And I like the idea of palm trees and this life, you know. It was a bold choice because really most artists at that time or someone, even with a dream of a career in art or work in art, would probably go to New York, don't you think? Yeah. And then a lot of people had the idea that if you're going to be an artist, you can do something commercial so you can make a living at it. And then there's hallmark cards in Kansas City. Yeah.

So Kansas City Art Institute welcomed a lot of people like that. Warhol started as a commercial artist. Yeah. He was an accomplished commercial artist before he got into painting. Yeah. And he was an exceptional person for that. But New York was, you know, a lot was happening back there in the 50s with the abstract expressionists and Dekooning and Franz Klein and all these people

Adolf Ghalib. At the time that you were moving out here, that was still happening in New York? It was still happening, yeah. And we got drift to that in our art school. I thought I wanted to be a sign painter. And so I went to enroll in art center school over on Third Street.

And their quotas were all filled, so I took the second best, and I went to Shenard, which was better for me. An art center had a dress code. You couldn't wear any affectation of a beatnik. You know, you couldn't wear... Facial hair.

You could facial hair of any kind, no good. You couldn't take a bongo drum to school. It's funny for an art school, right? Well, it is, totally. I mean, it's much different today than it was back then. But they actually said, you can't wear sandals to school. And you can't wear a beret. And it was a commercial school, but then,

And Shenard, on the other hand, was totally opposite that. You could dress and act like you wanted to and get away with everything. What was the experience of art school at that point in time? Well, I was in advertising design classes and general design classes and painting classes and drawing, and then they had another class called Visual World, studying the eye and everything that that means. And so I was lucky enough to be with a bunch of students who I jived with. And we kind of inspired each other.

Actually, it even got to the point of being competitive. And that was okay. And we had good instructors, too. We had Robert Irwin and Billy Al Bankston, John Altoon, and Emerson, Wolfer was a good teacher. And so these teachers just, you know, we got, we got it. this whole thing about abstract expressionism and painting on a canvas that's blank, you know, face-to-blank canvas with colors and brushes, and so we all sort of work towards that. And then it went, I got out of feeling like I wanted to be in commercial

art and I wanted to be in fine arts and painting and that sort of thing. You know, do just, I don't know, make crazy pictures that are preconceasing. Yeah. I'd had an idea in my head before I started it rather than facing a blank canvas. And has it always been that way for you? It's always preconceived and then you execute it? Pretty much, yeah. Yeah.

But other things will sneak into whatever the circumstance of the moment it is can influence me too. From your initial imagination to the finished piece, how different you are you? different might it be well sometimes it's surprisingly different but mostly it's i follow a course and uh sometimes that is just spontaneous and um kind of look at the world and in the contents of the world and everything is happening in it and then just piddle with it yeah you know just mess with the stuff that they give us can you think of a specific example of working on something and it changing? Yeah, I think early on when I was in school, I kind of lived on spam for a while.

And I love the lettering on spam. So I had a personal connection to this. The can, the shape of the can, it had a weird little thing. You don't see too many products being sold in that rounded corner metal containers anymore. I don't think you see that much. It's all plastic out. Yeah. And so something told me. you've got to make a picture out of this so I painted that real big like six feet across the logo they yeah spam so things like that that I felt like were things that I you know experienced just in everyday life yeah and that that's my subject matter and it's been kind of like that I mean off and on go zigzag

this way and that way you know you come in contact with a lot of stuff over the course of your life, what makes the one, this is the thing that's going to be the painting? What's the spark that you recognize? You know, a lot of times it's just a notion that comes from the sky or from the ground or some where you wonder where it is, and then you just take it with blind faith and carry on through with it. And I've found that to be true With a lot of my work is that I get a notion or something pulls at me, and then I go at it that way. I mean, I don't have a game plan or a method particularly, and it's a mysterious kind of phenomenon that's, you know, creating things. You have a notion that something's going to be interesting, then you decide to engage with it.

How do you pick the materials to use, for example? A lot of it is a habit, and the fact that paint seems to be okay as a source, as a material to use, and print making okay, the same thing, a piece of charcoal, pencil, you know, these are kind of established things, and I got onto them real early, and they don't seem to have changed that much, but, I mean, there is a lot. things that are happening in in the art world now that I mean they're using computers and they're doing all kinds of insane things that I'm not ready to step up to yeah you know and if it's not broken you don't need to fix it's like you don't tell me about the Ferris gallery what was that like it was really an astounding kind of group of artists that got together under the guys of

one man named Walter Hopps we all called him cheap And he created this gallery and got a space over on La Sienaiga. It was a storefront? Yeah. And the place is still there, but not the gallery. Yeah. But it was, I think, back in the 50s or 60s, it was, you know, they had to come up with $50 a month rent, you know, so. But they had a complete lineup of really great artists.

great artists. Well, they showed Andy Warhol's first exhibit of Campbell Soup Cams, you know, those. And then they had Giorgio Morandi paintings there, and they had Kurt Schwitters, a German dotist artist, and that made little collages from train receipts that he'd find on the floor, you know. I didn't know they had Morandi. I thought of them more as American artists. They were. I mean, it was. But they also had an appreciation for people like that. That's amazing. Yeah. Really pretty interesting lineup.

And a lot of contemporary artists at the time like Billy Al Bankston and John Altoon, Robert Irwin, Ed Moses, Craig Kaufman, Ken Price. And a lot of that sort of interwove with surfing and the beach lifestyle. And most of these artists were living in Venice. I was mostly in Hollywood on Western Ed. Avenue about that time, but I lived in Echo Park and around there, so I never really got out to Venice until later on, and I had a studio out there. But anyway, Ferris was a hot spot, and Monday night was the openings. People would flock to Ferris. They have one every Monday? Yeah, every Monday night, and you'd walk from gallery to gallery on Las Eindigua, and then up the street

and you'd go to Barney's Beanery. So people would. hang out there. Ed Keenholz was another artist of the, he was one of the first artists that showed there and that actually created that gallery. So he was, he was one of the owners of the gallery. And Wally Berman. Yeah. Did you know him? Yeah, yeah. Oh, he's a great. Good friend. I just saw his son Tosh the other night and who was like that tall when I met Wally. But did you ever know No, no, no. I'm just a fan of the work. Yeah.

Yeah. And then there a little bit of the cinema world got involved in it, and Dennis Hopper was one of the first people to come around and actually buy works from the gallery, and he bought my first painting. The first painting you ever sold was to him. Yeah. Great. I mean, there's quite a few people from the movie business, but I was always surprised that there

weren't more people in the movie business that were interested in art you know vincent price he was an art collector yeah and he had a real good taste and all that so did edward g robinson people like that but they didn't touch young artists you know uh russ tamblin was another uh artist and i i still see i went to his 90th birthday party the other day amazing yeah i reminded him that i watched watched him on a It was an Academy Award presentation or something, and he was at one end of the stage, and he did a cartwheel, cartwheel, cartwheel, cartwheel split like this.

I just couldn't believe it. And he must have been 70 years old when he did that. Amazing. We'd be able to do that, but he was a great dancer. Anyway, he was one of those people that was kind of under the sphere of Wally Berman George Hermes was another artist that was right there

and he's still alive on the Monday nights when you would go was it, would you say it was mostly artists? It was a lot of people interested in the scene and a lot of these people they might end up buying art

I mean if it was over $50, forget it I mean you couldn't they were not interested in it and there was another actor named Sterling Holloway, who is, he was a supporter of the Ferris, and he would buy things from there. And then there's Don McCarty and Christopher Isherwood, the writer, and they would always come around. Cool. So they were part of the scene, and it was a lively bunch of people.

They were all, they all had their individual voices. each one of them had their own unique kind of thing. They were not really, you couldn't say, they're all work all looks like, because it didn't. No. Each one was entirely different. Even when you describe them, it's interesting imagining them all hanging out together

because they think of them in different ways. Yeah. Yeah. Would you say in the whole scene were there a few hundred people or a few thousand people at that time? I would say a few hundred people. Yeah. to be safe small local scene yeah it was it was small local but people knew about it and uh people from

new york knew that uh whatever's happened in l a it's really going to be maybe the fairest gallery that's interesting how do you think they knew i guess you know it's the our world is such a small entity that were just spread in little ways but they they knew what was happening and then a man named Irving Blum, who's still alive. He was partnered with Walter Hopps, and Irving took the gallery over eventually. And Walter went on to be the director of the Smithsonian and the Corcoran Gallery in Washington.

Anyway, and then the international scene sort of opened up when Marcel Duchamp had his first gallery show in his life. He was like 65 years old. And Walter Hopps gave him this show at the Pasadena Art Museum, so that was a big thing. And all the artists went there, and it was a, it was really a notable event in the art world. Do you think if Walter Hopps didn't do that Duchamp show when Duchamp was 65, maybe our perception of Duchamp might have been different now? I think so. It was eventually going to happen no matter what. And so if Walter hadn't done it, I mean, someone else would have a big museum, maybe like, I mean, a lot of his work is owned by the Philadelphia Museum. And, but he's, you know, highly respected and a real curious phenomenon to anybody who makes art, you know, is a lot of people don't like him because he didn't paint pretty pictures, you know. L-M-N-T, Element Electrolites.

Have you ever felt dehydrated after an intense workout or a long day in the sun? Do you want to maximize your endurance and feel your best? Add element electrolytes to your daily routine. Perform better and sleep deeper. Improve your cognitive function. Experience an increase in steady energy with fewer headaches and fewer muscle cramps. Element electrolytes. Drink it in the sauna.

Refreshing flavors include grapefruit, citrus, watermelon, and chocolate salt. Formulated with the perfect balance of sodium, potassium, and magnesium to keep you hydrated and energized throughout the day. These minerals help conduct the electricity that powers your nervous system so you can perform at your very best. Element electrolytes are sugar-free, keto-friendly, and great tasting. Minerals are the stuff of life. So visit Drink L-M-N-T. dot com slash tetra and stay salty with element electrolytes l m nt do you feel like the movement that you were part of was the movement after abstract expressionism yeah I mean there were

you know urgings and you know things brewing underneath the whole abstract expressionist Boy, those guys were really painted beautiful pictures, but there was almost like no room to move around them because, you know, that's all covered, all these things or these statements that they're making with paint and shapes and all this are kind of so well done by them, why add to the whole thing? Yeah.

You know, so it kind of went to the opposite side, which is it kind of leaked into the world of politics, popular culture. Yeah. And people were beginning to say, well, maybe the Coca-Cola bottle is not such a bad thing after all. It's a very known thing. And so let's make something of it.

And Duchamp also said that too. I mean, he was saying, look around. I mean, there's a lot to see. You might be overlooking the valuable things. What do you think the first piece of art you ever saw that could be considered pop art? considered Pop Hart. Let me see. I'll show you.

This is the first thing that got me. That's about the actual size of that work. It's a pen and ink drawing by an unknown artist named Johannes Bargild, who was a German Dottist, 1920, and that's called Beatles. And I saw that thing sort of almost like the size of a poster stamp in a book, you know, and I thought, wow, it just blew me away. And it was so curious. I mean, it looked like, what is that? Horses at a starting gate or what is it?

Almost looked like a science experiment or, you know, not meant to be perceived as art. And that's what I liked about it. Yeah. So it had a real power to it. What year did you see this? I saw that about 1960, 1960. Yeah. Yeah, 1959, 1960. That was made in 1920. I wanted to see that thing in the raw, you know. So I went to the Museum of Modern Art on my first trip to New York,

and I made a cold call to the Department of Drawings and just told them I wanted to see that. And they said, come on up. Yeah, they bring this work out, you know, and show it to me. And I felt like it's like I've got an audience with the Pope. Yeah. Yeah. What else did you see on that trip?

I saw a lot of, I mean, that was my first trip to New York. So I'd never been there before. And then I went to Europe after that for about six months. And I saw mostly, I saw American art in Europe. And I didn't get too inspired by what European artists were doing, even contemporary artists. I didn't see too many that I really liked. So work like this really had a powerful effect on me.

And also Jasper John's work, he painted Target. And then he had these ceramic faces called Target and Four Faces with these, you know, things like this with a little flap that comes down, like a little doorway that comes up. And you know, like I thought, But wow, that's another, that's another one of these things that is so puzzling. I won't even bother to figure that out why I like it, but I do.

Yeah. Tell me about that feeling of mystery. Yeah. Is that what it's all about? Unexplained. Yeah. What's the first time you saw any work with type in it? Maybe Picasso painted things like that.

and the French Surrealists did, and also Jasper Johns painted that way too. So I got pretty moved by that type of work. And I was also, I liked printing and setting type. I learned how to do that. I worked for a printer and ran the presses. So I learned how to set type and do that. And then that became aesthetic to me. you know it began to really influence me so I made some books from that and then the idea of making a book into

I mean why can't a book be considered an artwork that was a new idea when you had it yeah yeah it's just a you know piling on of all this stuff you just give your soul to the school and to all your friends and then you know every day that you get up and go to school and every day that you get up and go to school and every day that you make art something new is coming into the scene and you'd be keeping up with what's going on in the neighborhood you know ferris gallery and all the other galleries too there were a lot of them and then there were people who were kind of living out in the sticks like bruce nowman was beginning to show his work there and and joe good was showing his work and so it was like a vital Vital period.

Do you think that feeling of community was necessary for you? If you would have come and there were no other artists and you would just by yourself, would it have happened? Or is it having a group of people, I want to say like-minded, you know, even with different ideas, but some thread of going out into the new world, you know? Yeah. I can't imagine doing the thing by myself. but maybe I encountered something in your book that you also said,

but in a different way, which is all art comes out of other art. And so, you know, originality is a vague term. Yeah. Total originality. I mean, people come along and they're phenomenal, but they're not absolutely immune to, you know, trying to understand the world or something. Yeah, and all of the information we have is stuff we've taken in over the course of our life.

It's not, we don't come in filled with ideas or pictures. We come in empty and then we go through life and see things and fill up this sort of storage. Yeah, but I guess it's, you know, it's fortunate that we can have opinions about things because otherwise you wouldn't have things you don't like and you wouldn't. And so I would have things that I don't like and, you know, I don't like that. And yet that would influence me too. So it all comes together to make up who you are. So I see a lot of people have funny feelings about the art world where it's,

they think it's all conspiratorial or something that they, you know, only the people who work hard at it or they don't even have to have that much talent to, make a life out of it, but I see too much, like, young artists today, or they're like kamikaze, you know, they're this crash and burn. They're making great works, but they're out there, you know, and there are younger people who are really, you know, pushing it forward. So it's good to see. Music, same way, huh? Yeah, it's always changing, always moving. I can't say it's always better, but there are always knew interesting things yeah i think in the past it was more curated because it was harder

to put stuff out so less stuff came out tom petty would say in the 1960s if you played on a record you had to be good you wouldn't get to play on a record if you weren't really good everybody was good yeah and now the entry level is lower so anyone can do it but from that really interesting things can happen yeah sure i want to ask you about the um picture without words that you have at the getty oh yeah did you create that piece to live in that space yeah yeah i took a um careful measurements they gave me this commission to do that saying there's a wall do something to it you know and so it's a big wall yeah it's like 30 feet high basically maybe 40 it's very tall Yeah, and it's about 15, 20 feet wide or something, you know.

So I conceived of this thing that I thought would be really good for an auditorium, you know, light streaming in from somewhere and smashing to the floor, making a mark on the floor. It was a big project. It was, you know, we put together these aluminum aircraft skins. together to make up this 30 by 15 foot surface to stretch canvas on. So it was very heavy, and I had to work on a studio I had in Venice. And I did a time study on it because light was coming in continuously throughout the day,

and it would blast on the wall and go down like this. And so we did a time study with natural sunlight. And that was a technique that they had invented at the General Motors company, I think, to study automobile paints. And they have a way of doing a time study on something. And they can tell you how much damage or how much light is going to happen over 150 year time. Wow. And so they ran this over there. And I mean, it taught me a lot, I guess.

but then I didn't want it to interfere with my idea. Yeah. And so, I don't know. I mean, that painting is about 25 years old now. Really? And I don't see anything changed about it at all. Yeah. When you describe the picture without words,

you talk about the light coming in and smashing the floor. When I see the image, I see the light. Like, to me, the feature of the painting, is the light. Yes, there's an opening that it's coming in through at the top. Yes, there's a place it's landing on the bottom. Yeah. But the feature of it is the light.

So it's interesting to hear you describe it as there's an opening and where it lands. Yeah. Yeah. And then a painting of that magnitude size was a little tricky. So I, and I had a studio in Venice that had a 30-foot ceiling but this painting would not quite fit that so i painted it on its side yeah and i was always looking like this i've got a picture of my son eddie and we're both looking at painting like this you know was the first time you saw it upright in the museum yeah was there ever a consideration

to paint it there or was that not possible no no no it wasn't possible i mean someone would have come out of the woodwork and done something yes they would have used that and painted on the wall but i i couldn't see doing it that way i wanted a mobile something i could paint off-site and then install it just made better sense did you ever consider painting it in a way that you could take it apart and put it together oh you mean like multiple parts yeah like if it was in four pieces that came together you know i thought about that but i'd didn't like those joints yeah yeah yeah it had to be in one piece so that's the way it got to be and and so it was painted on its side yeah and uh i had a cot that i was always looking at it so

i just lay down on this cot and then to install it was i luckily had a fabricator ron mcpherson who uh really knew how to he prepared the canvas for me for me and put it on this aircraft, aluminum aircraft skin with armature behind it and a, you know, a frame and everything. And then to move it, it took two forklift trucks to get it in place. And then somehow they had a complicated setup of bolts that held this thing in place. And boy, you have to have some fabricator with ideas to know how to pull something like that. Yeah. That's why I always admire artists who make giant things in factories and, you know, with fabricators

and Jeff Coons, a lot of people don't like his work, but if they looked at the fabrication of his work, it is top, top quality. Yeah, the detail's unbelievable. Yeah. It's unbelievable. Tell me how size of an image impacts it. What's the difference between the same image big versus small? versus small. Yeah, I always had, I mean, even working like a size like this, I would get into

a habit for convenience and just the physicality of it. I like little works. And even I get the works that were tiny like this. I like tiny things too. So every time I approach a work that I think I want to make, something pushes me in the direction of size. And I'll say, that'll work better if it's just like half size rather than six feet by eight feet, you know. And just the inner knowing? Yeah, yeah. Or something says, how am I going to learn from this thing unless it overpowers me? I want a wall rocket.

And then that makes it become itself. How is it different making a piece like the example in McGettie to live in a certain place versus a piece that's going to just be shown what's going to be shown. Is that different? Well, I pretty much was guaranteed that that's going to stay there for a while. Yeah, but I'm saying if you're asked to paint a picture that's going to live in one place forever, it doesn't have to be that size. Yeah.

If you know where it's going to live, does that change it? Not in the making of it, and there are not many works. of art I make that I ever have any notion of where that thing's going to end up. So usually it's going to go where it's going to do. Yeah. But I've worked on commissions too where I did a library in Miami in 1985 that involved 60 paintings that were like six feet by 12 feet. And then a circular rotunda about six, let's see, words without thoughts, never.

to heaven go. That's seven words from Hamlet. And so I painted one word on each one, and it was joined together. Each one was joined and sort of painted on aluminum with canvas, mounted to aluminum. And then we would bend it into place in this circular opening. So sometimes the colors would jar with each other

and they wouldn't continue on. You know, it wouldn't continue. So that's an example of some where I knew that were these things were going to go. Yeah. And they're now in place. Yeah. Now that building was brand new designed by Philip Johnson. And now they're thinking about, well, it's lived its life.

Well, what's going to happen with my artwork? And I go back and look at the contract and it doesn't really cover me on anything. It's not protected. I wonder what's going to happen to that. I mean, it'd be nice if they gave me those back. I don't know what they're going to do. Well, maybe a museum would buy it and build a installation. Something.

I don't think it'll just go away. Yeah. How important are the words you use? They've got to have some kind of temperature to them or anonymity to them or I use a lot of two or three word combinations that they're not only just single words, but I started painting these single words. words like spam, you know, and I like that because it had an explosive sound to it. And they're like verbal utterings, you know, like smash. I always like words like that that had a noise quotient to them. Does how the letters look matter as well?

Yeah, and then I was into typefaces and things like that that I felt like that that's got to be part of the art. and then it moved on from there but it was just like I like the way words go across a canvas and you know your eyes are set like this and they read from left to right that's right and so it became a almost like a landscape so I was picturing landscape I mean even if I look out under this lawn right here I'm seeing kind of a horizontal activity here that I'm picking up with my eyes and and I like that So landscapes, I like landscape painting, things like that. And so maybe I could see these, this landscape horizontal where words would just be sitting on the landscape. So, and then they became the landscape. Do you have your Hollywood sign painting that's really wide? Yeah, that was a kind of an example.

I lived over on Western Avenue in Santa Monica, Boulevard, and I would check out that Hollywood sign every day, and it was like a thermometer, you know, a weather vein or something. If I couldn't read that sign, I knew it was, I don't want to stay outside. It's too smoggy. Yeah. So if I can read it, then if it's very clear, then I know that the air is okay to breathe. Do you remember the thought of painting it from behind? And maybe I got the idea by looking in the mirror or just accidentally seeing the painting in a mirror and the painting was behind me. So then I thought, well, that's not an unlivable kind of image, is it?

Yeah. It's got some substance to it. And painting it from the back, it's kind of like an ode to the rear view mirror or something like that. Yeah. Also feels like it could be telling a story about Hollywood, like behind the scenes or something. Yeah. I don't know. It definitely creates a question mark when you look at it.

Yeah. Just looking at it from afar was not enough for me, so I would go up there to the Hollywood sign. Back then, you could just walk right up to it and climb around it and it. And it was really shoddy, made out of pieces of tin, I guess, on what looked like. telephone poles. I think it's probably a lot of those poles are still holding the existing sign today. So I felt like, yeah, I see it from afar, but now I'm touching it. In a world of artificial highs and harsh stimulants, there is something different, something clean, something precise, athletic nicotine, Not the primitive products found behind convenience store counters.

Not the aggressive buzz that leaves you jittery, but a careful calibration of clean energy and focused clarity. Athletic nicotine, the lowest dose tobacco-free nicotine available, made entirely in the USA. No artificial sweetness, just pure, purposeful elevation. Athletic nicotine is a performance neutropic. Athletic nicotine is a tool for shifting minds. sets. Athletic nicotine is a partner in pursuit of excellence. Slow release. Low dose. Gradual lift.

Sustained energy. Soft landing. Inspired results. Athletic nicotine. More focus. Less static. Athletic nicotine. More clarity. Less noise. Athletic nicotine. More accuracy. Less anxiety. Athletic nicotine. From top athletes pushing their limits to artists pursuing their vision. Athletic nicotine offers the lift you've been looking for. Learn more at athletic nicotine.com slash tetra and experience next level performance with athletic nicotine. Warning, this product contains nicotine. Nicotine is an addictive chemical.

Tell me about perspective in general. So the choice of painting it from behind is changing the perspective. we normally see. I remember paintings you've done where we're looking at something and we start moving to the side and now we're seeing it from the side view and even further side view

and sometimes where you can barely make out what it is anymore because we're so close to parallel to the image. Yeah. Tell me about the idea of perspective in general. I guess I liked the concept of baseline perspective where and I think it came from movies and and I would see movies as a kid and

there would always be a some scene with the characters in the movie they're traveling somewhere and so they show you a little train and the train always starts way off to the side and it's tiny down here and then pretty soon it comes you know so wow that's panoramic isn't it? And so I wanted to do some panoramic study. And also I would always see this 20th century Fox logo and wanted to go ahead and complete its diminishment, you know. And so it was like a three-dimensional, essentially. Yeah, yeah. And it was almost like one of those freight trains or passenger trains that comes, zooms in from the right-hand corner and complete. takes over the left-hand corner.

So it's like a megaphonic kind of experience. Did 20th Century Fox ever use your version? No. Really? No, no. I'm surprised. Yeah, no. And I've really got any pushback from anybody.

Even a standard station, you know, I had this idea about gas stations, and I always liked gas stations and the architecture of it. architecture of it and even for a while pictured myself I could live in one of those gas stations it's not bad at all yeah it's got the canopy was so great and park your car under the canopy you know and then there's a little house yeah you could live in it I I love that concept so I was just you know that was an extension of somewhere I thought I might want to live yeah tell me about the way California has changed over the course of your life I do remember I mean There was a specific thing as I was reading them a look magazine and there was an article about Los Angeles and it said that there was a this was like 1950s six or seven there was a net gain of a thousand people a day so boy if if 500 people in L.A. left that would mean 1,500 people would have to come in and that would have to come in and that

was just to me phenomenal then that got a thousand people a day net gain that's astounding you know but i i'm not sure what it is today it might be greater or might be less i don't know but i like the old neighborhoods in downtown l.a and you know i lived over in silver lake and echo park Hollywood and I see now when I drive over there I see entire blocks gone yeah they've been swept clean and you know what's coming aircraft carriers God and so I see great change in the city yeah and a lot of the really pretty old buildings are gone or they're ready to be gone you know yeah I'm surprised Muso Franks is still there Yeah. You did the photo book that opens up of Sunset Boulevard, the two sides of Sunset Boulevard.

I remember I bought that right when I moved to California before, I even knew your work. I bought that book, and my plan was to have the two sides framed to put on either side of a hallway because I lived right on Sunset Boulevard. And I thought like this is the perfect. I never went through with putting it together. but I loved that feeling of it was a place that I romanticized about because it was the 60s in California, Sunset Strip. For people who like music, it was a very important time. Band Roar's Box. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it was great. How did the idea come to do it in that fashion? You know, maybe it's some romantic connections to words again, like sunset, I didn't, didn't realize that there was going to be, I was going to come to L.A. and find that there was an actual sunset boulevard. Yeah. You know, so, and then, wow, they also give you a sunset. And then that became a kind of a target for this activity I had

going in my mind to photograph buildings and just for posterity's sake or just as a, um, you're acting like a reporter you know and you're capturing what's out there and bringing it back printing it on paper so I've been doing that for years and they've got a website at the Gettie called 12 Sunsets and if you get on that it'll show you they've taken my photography over the past 50 years you can look at what it looked like, what a building looked like in 1966 and one, 86, 96, and if you want to know how many synagogues there are on Sunset Boulevard, bang, bang, bang, if you want to know how many dry cleaners, bang, bang, bang.

And I thought that's a piece of information that is beyond imagination, you know, that they're able to do something like that. But there was a team of people that got all that the pictures together, the photography, and then studied it and like an archaeological study in a way. Yeah, yeah, yeah. When you did your first one, did you have any thoughts about the future or no? You felt like this is just documenting the moment. Well, no, I had notions about what it would be like, and then, of course, I didn't know.

Yeah, can't know. So, but the possibility was always out there, and I like the absurdity of it. Yeah. What can you and can't you learn in art school? Yeah, I think, well, that you can learn is that there shouldn't really be any rules. Yeah. And all possibilities are out there. that that kind of disturbed some people because they like to have their thinking grounded in reason

instead of absurdity or possible you know things out there in space and so that's something I learned there and luckily I was around a lot of students that also were in kind of a competitive sense inspiring each other and we didn't get everything we learned from the instructors we did learned a lot from them but we got learned a lot by just being around each other yeah competing and you know making pictures and crazy art and yeah so it was good for all that at some point over the course of your life from where you started till now and I'm not talking about your art I'm talking about the fine art world, the fine art world became mainstream. It was not when you were starting.

When you started going into art, no one went into art thinking it's a serious career. It might be something to do, but it wasn't like I'm going to be successful doing this thing. No, no. It didn't promise you a successful career like they do today. I mean, you go to our art school today, and there's all kinds of commercial possibilities to spin off into that you can make a living from. But we just wanted to make art, you know, till we spit blood.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was almost deciding not to pursue anything that could be successful. Yeah. Does that sound right? Yeah, yeah. I mean, or that it would be, you know, condescending or where you'd be edging into the world of commercial,

art or something like that, you know, that was frowned on, I guess. Yeah, I mean, but, you know, then a lot of people would, we all made living from it and I make a living from it. So, yeah, but I'm still kind of in a state of wonderment trying to figure the whole thing out. Yeah. I read that one of your paintings, eight or ten years ago now, sold at auction for $50-something million. And do you know which painting I'm talking? about yeah okay tell me from its inception when you made it what was the reaction to it when it originally sold what it sold for if you remember and then the life story of this painting oh it was painted about

1965 I guess it was a painting called radio I painted the word radio and then I somehow wanted to take some sea clamps you know carpenter's sea clamps and pinch these letters, you know, pinch them and for, just to aggravate the theme. Yeah. And I believe I had the, yeah, I showed these things at the Ferris Gallery, and I didn't sell them. I didn't sell anything for quite a while, but then eventually, I think maybe 10 years later or something, I sold it for probably $500, and out of that I got $250. I had to pay taxes on.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then do you know what happened to it after that? Yeah, it was bought by Jack Quinn, who was an attorney. He helped a lot of artists out, and he bought the painting, and they had it in their home for years and years, and then it was sold after he died. And he was a proponent for 10% resale royalty for artists, you know, for unique works of art.

which never really became law. They tried to invent this thing. Every time the work was sold, artist gets 10% of it. But it took hold for a little bit here in the state of California, and then they voted it out. So, of course, when that sold and I heard about that, I wanted to say, where's my cut?

Yeah, yeah. But there wasn't any. So that's the folly of it all. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, the good news is that if someone would pay that for that work, maybe your other works might be worth something. I guess so. It's supposed to work that way.

Not always, but... Oh, so I asked you about the mainstreaming of art. When do you think it got more like taken seriously in the public? What made that happen? Well, a change in attitude, I guess, that goes from generation to generation, that you had the abstract expressionist before that you had well you might say Ashtan school or New York School of Painting and that lasted into 30s and 40s

and you had French realism come in there and then Picasso was always working at that time and so it was always evolving into newer and different things and it's like the music world I guess you know you got rock and billy coming out of race music and rock and roll coming out of that then jazz has always been around

so it's the same kind of framework I think the art world and the music world is a lot alike and you might say literature too I guess there's just these waves of people coming and going and you know creating new things and it's pretty active.

It's pretty active in the audience out there and the people who are producing it, the artist, there's no shortage of them. So much of today's life happens on the web. Squarespace is your home base for building your dream presence in an online world. Designing a website is easy. one of Squarespace's best-in-class templates.

With the built-in style kit, you can change fonts, imagery, margins, and menus. So your design will be perfectly tailored to your needs. Discover unbreakable creativity with fluid engine, a highly intuitive drag-and-drop editor. No coding or technical experience is required. Understand your site's performance with in-depth website analytics tool. analytics tools. Squarespace has everything you need to succeed online.

Create a blog. Monetize a newsletter. Make a marketing portfolio. Launch an online store. The Squarespace app helps you run your business from anywhere. Track inventory and connect with customers while you're on the go. Whether you're just starting out or already managing a managing a successful brand, Squarespace makes it easy to create and customize a beautiful

website. Visit Squarespace.com slash tetra and get started today. Tell me about the difference between seeing a reproduction of an image in a book versus seeing the real thing in a museum up close. I got inspired by reproductions. Yeah. And sometimes the post-stamp picture, like this thing right here, I saw as a little illustration in a book on the subject of the Dada movement in Germany. And that was all I needed for that. And I wanted to push another step forward when I called the Museum of Modern Art and wanted

to see it in person, you know, and they showed me. But I saw little reproductions hit me just as hard as a real work. Yeah. I didn't see a lot of real works until later on. When you saw the real version of the da-da piece, was there any revelation that was different than seeing the postage stamp or no? Yeah. There's some color in here.

There's a little red ink that I didn't really know. And it didn't seem to matter. My love for this little thing here was enough that it didn't matter if there were colors in here. But seeing the colors was like a bonus. Yeah. Yeah. What do you think makes an American artist besides coming from here

in terms of the work? You know, it's more international than ever. And so influences are across the pond and everywhere, so I think it's so universal now that it's, but it used to be closeted off in little pockets, you know, what's happening in France and what's happening in England is another thing, like David Hockney and his friends, they all sort of, you could look at their work and say, yeah, they're all connected somehow, you know, and they had a solid kind of look that was generally similar.

And as time goes by, you know, you can get fatigued by looking at their work. And you can, you know, then somebody else comes along. So it's unpredictable. I read that you were included in the first ever pop art exhibition in Pasadena in 1962. What do you remember about that time? Yeah, that was an exhibit put together. by Walter Ops and he was at that time the director of the Pasadena Art Museum is a really kind of eclectic out-of-the-way museum to have and he was uh I mean you'd be around him for five

minutes and you'd realize that this guy's for real and he had something to say yeah it was like a real experience to be around this guy and he had a way of um well first of all he would bum a cigarette from me, you know, and he'd walk back and forth, puffing this cigarette, and then Addie's walking back and forth, speaking and saying great things as he's walking back and forth, and when he leaves the room, he realized, you've learned something. Wow. You know? That's great.

And so he put all this together. He put that show together, and I felt honored to be in it. It was good. And I felt like a lot of these other artists that were in that show or they shared some common sympathies, you know, an openness to the world of commerce, you know, the world, the pop culture, and what's happening in the world today.

Yeah. And choosing subjects that are figurative instead of abstract like they were for years, which was great art. too. You know, the abstract expressionists and all those people, abstract painting. And they're still abstract painters today that are pretty good. Yeah, yeah. What else was in that show in 62? Do you remember? Joe Good was in there. I grew up with him. He was a, an altar boy in my church. He was sort of like the altar boy with a black eye like he'd see in Norman Rockwell

paintings. and Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein. Had you seen Roy's work before that exhibit? Yeah, Roy Lichtenstein, yeah, yeah. Where would you have seen it? I saw that in 1961 at the Leo Castelli Gallery. And I was in Europe and painted a bunch of little pictures about that size and wanted to show them to Leo Costelli.

and I respected him. He had a real good gallery. And he said, let me show you in the back room, go back there. And there was a painting there of somebody named Roy Lichtenstein. I never heard of him. I got to know him. He was a good friend, finally.

But it was a picture of tennis shoes. And I just felt like, ooh, God, that's hard to look at. That hurts, you know. It's aggravating. And it's so terrible, and then it's got some possibility to it. And damn, that thing might be profound. Yeah. Yeah, it's amazing.

I love that painting of the tennis shoes, you know, that he would, and he did, all of his art was made that way. You know, he had a way of seeing the world through kind of comic book eyes. Yeah. And he took that and ran with it and had a very good, besides career of it. I mean, he created some really great work. And you talked about your trip to Europe and not really feeling the European art as much as the American art. Was there anything about the place that you remember about Europe that spoke to you?

Just the location, the buildings, the experience. Yeah, I went all over. I went through Spain and I just, you know, I love this West, San Sebastian, Spain and went to Barcelona, Madrid, and Lisbon. And all around Europe, I didn't get as far as Eastern Europe. I went through the Greek Isles, and I bought a douche-o-o-o, you know, those cars. I think so. The little teeny, it's a little teeny car. It looks like a throw-away vehicle.

Yeah. A real teeny, and it got like 60 miles to a gallon of gas. And I drove all over Europe and the British Isles, too. Wow. And it looks kind of like a Volkswagen bug, but smaller and like a toy version of a Volkswagen bug. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and it was very flimsy. I mean, it was like paper thin.

I mean, I haven't seen one in L.A. for a long time. No, not in a long time. Yeah. I see them sometimes in other places in the world. Yeah, yeah. But Europe was, you know, I went to the museums over there, and I learned quite a bit. seeing the museums I didn't get so much influence from all these historical artists I didn't get so much from that but I mean I was more into what was

happening in America yeah but hell I mean Europe is the beginning of it yeah it had moved at the time that you were yeah like it does it always moves around you know yeah have you used any unusual materials over the years I was using oil for a long time and then I felt like I was putting a skin on a surface, you know, and that I wanted to do something else like stain the surface in some way or other. And so I started using gunpowder, which is charcoal and sulfur and instead of using graphite, gunpowder was, I was able to make an image with it and correct it if I made a mistake. easy to correct not so much with graphite but then I started using staining things with grass

cut from the you know and rubbing the grass in that sort of thing and axle grease and caviar and things like that that made images and but I didn't know about the last ability of them or anything like that do you know if they survived yeah yeah they mostly have yeah yeah yeah and uh but i i made a hollywood image out of peptobismo and uh if you leave that out in the open eventually i mean that's it's almost 50 years old and the image is still there but it's faded a little bit you know so no customer guarantee yeah Are there any themes that you've returned to over the years? Well, I haven't gone back to gas stations.

I mean, I guess the main theme is words, I guess, that persist right up to today. I'm looking at it a little like it's, well, could I call it poetry? Is that too ambitious to call it poetry or what? but I find myself making these little word things and they mean something to me, but I don't think too much about it. Yeah. There was a period where you were using words,

but they weren't complete words. There were parts of words or letters were left out. I did a few things like that, but then that began to, it made me question what I'm doing, you know, and are you deliberately leaving these letters out or chopping this word? too much of a choice.

Yeah. How is your relationship to making art changed over the course of your life? Well, I'm surprised and I'm still at it. Yeah. Physically, I can handle it, and I still have the same motivation and belief in it. I'm not distracted from the many things that are out there. I see that, you know, the world's full of cacophony, noise, and, you know, visual and otherwise. And so I maintain my love of doing it.

So stop the presses. Yeah. What's the feeling you get when you finish a piece? Usually I know when I'm finished. Sometimes I'll stop a little early and then say, don't go any further. Yeah. And it just has to kind of round itself out. Every so often I'll start something,

and then I've got to tear it up. Yeah. Start over again. Tell me about life in the desert. I started going out there. I, in the late 40s, I had this friend, and Harry Cohn. His father had a movie studio called Columbia Pictures,

and somehow he was given this property inside of Joshua Tree National Park. and somebody took me out there I knew this young Harry Cohn who died a few years ago but he lived back in these enormous boulders with a house built in the 1930s and it still exists

sounds great yeah yeah it's down a little dirt road inside the park there's a few privately owned parcels inside the park And I just said, oh, this is just great. I mean, Joshua trees and all this.

So, and I found a property that I got up near Pioneer Town, if you know where that is. I don't know where that is. Yeah. What else is near there? Yucca Valley, Joshua Tree, basically. It's high desert, so it's like 5,000 feet. And then, so I got this place in 75, and I started building a house out there. there and finally took about four or five years to build this house and I go out

there all the time so I'll go out for like a week or ten days and then I don't usually make much art out there because I go out there and I read or I you know take care of little repairs things like that events of plain living when you're out there do you see many people or is it no you don't you don't I don't see anybody around. I mean, I've got a neighbor maybe that's a mile away that I never see. So it's remote and... Sounds great.

For all that, it's great to have it be remote like that. And there's no progress around it or anything, but every so often the fire will get near there, but it's a little bit on the other side of Big Bear Lake. It's the desert side of Big Bear Lake. And it's a habit of sort of a living habit that I don't go out there and look at the landscape and want to take impressions from it and make art from it. So I don't really do that, but it's just a living thing that, a habitual kind of routine that I find myself in that I love doing.

You think it's what you see? or the silence. Silence has a lot to do with it. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's a military base out there, Marine 29 Palms, Marine Base, and you hear helicopters go over every so often,

but it's very remote and good for that reason. Yeah, sounds great. Yeah. Tell me the timeline from an idea for a work until you have a finished work typically. typically, or is there no typical? I don't often have a notion to do something where I'm forced to put it off for a while

and still keep on to the idea. So I usually get onto things soon, but then sometimes I'll work on a painting for, I don't know, three or four years. I did one of the Los Angeles County Museum on fire, and I just, I would paint on that thing for a couple of months and then I put it away for six months and paint on it for a while and then put it away for another period of time. And so it's not like something that has a

deadline to it. Yeah. So would you say there are always works in progress around? Yeah. Yeah. Right now I have about four or five things that I, I mean, I kind of put aside, but it's there to look at but I know I've got progress to make on it but I'll do it when I get to it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Are there any that start and finish and they just happen?

Yeah, I'll do that with things that are simple or involve one or two colors or things like that that I feel like are right, but generally I start working on something and I stick with it until it's done. Yeah. To remember the initial thought behind the museum on fire painting?

That came out of, I mean, the angle of the museum, the way it was in the picture, is really doing the same thing as that 20th century Fox or the standards. Perspective, the feeling of perspective. It goes from lower right-hand corner to upper left-hand corner and the slope of the building and everything, and then you get up here and you've got a fire happening.

And then over here, you've got this green, placid lawn or whatever it is. And so you've got the hot spot over here and you almost could fall asleep over here. Yeah. But the thought of deciding I'm gonna paint the museum on fire as opposed to just painting the museum, do you remember the instant of it's gonna be on fire?

Yeah, yeah. I'd use the idea of fire in certain, things and I made a book called various small fires and I've got no unreasonable attachment to fires but I felt like they were like additional things in a picture so and they were very colorful you know so you'd have this blast of light happening over here yeah and but the whole thing with the museum started with a helicopter ride that I took over L.A. And we somehow fell into, somebody said, you want to take it all of me? Yeah, sure.

And I'll take my Polaroid camera with me. And we went all over L.A. in a period of like 45 minutes. And you can see the entire city. And you see thousands and thousands of swimming pools. Yeah. And then we somehow came around over by the L.A. County Museum. And I took some pictures of it. and I always felt like it was a authority figure, you know, in some ways,

and that maybe this is my statement against this authority figure, you know, let it burn. So, you know, it became that and a combination of just wanting to paint a picture, you know, just the idea of keeping my hands busy. Yeah. Has that painting ever shown at that museum? Yeah, it was. about three months ago it was in my exhibit there at the county museum fantastic would you say you're always working pretty much yeah i mean i don't take vacation breaks so much i'm not really

into that i don't want to work i mean i i do like my studio and i find a kind of security in just being around my the way I work and and there always seems to be something urgently needs to be worked on and thought about yeah is there a typical time a day you like to paint uh usually during the day sometimes at night and um phone doesn't ring things like that and that can be uplifting tell me about mason williams So Mason, he was a friend of mine in third grade in Oklahoma City. He and I were good friends, and he and I came to California together and lived in a boarding house downtown.

And Mason, he went off, and he was in the Navy for a couple of years, and I just stayed in an art school, and then he came back, and I talked to him all the time, and he lives in Oregon now. And he and I've made projects together and I've done artwork for him and he's a really interesting character and and talented, great musician and you know feel lucky to have him as a friend. Yeah, I mean, great musician and he also was involved in comedy. I think he discovered Steve Martin. Yeah, yeah, he and Steve were played banjo together and they've, and he really, and he

wrote he actually hired steve to write the smother brothers yeah amazing yeah when you have a work that's a series of images let's say the gas station book tell me about what goes into a sequence it's a evolving kind of thing that sometimes is just you make these decisions and uh if i have 26 photographs in front of me how do i know how where they're going to go and how they fit together and there's no common game plan anything like that you move them around and see what yeah yeah it's a matter of moving around it's almost like making a collage in a way and then there's a kind of a routine that i don't want to be too sensible or too aggressive or too uh ununderstandable Yeah. Do you ever put limitations on your work?

I think I do, and probably usually when I do, I don't know it, what I'm doing. Do you ever say, I'm only going to work in black and white, for example, or I'm only going to make it, it can't be bigger than this size? Yeah. When I was in school, I admired Franz Klein because he chose to work only in black and white, mostly. And I thought, God, what a, what a, what a. a commitment to that. And I liked the commitment as well as I did the work of art. And I also, everybody had respect for Marcel Duchamp when he said, hey, I'm not going to paint anymore. Yeah. And that was like 1925. Yeah. He said, I'm making no more art. I mean,

he did, he broke his rule there. He was making little things all along. But the idea of saying, you know, standing up to the world saying, I'm not going to make any more art. I mean, it's somehow But it taught us something. I don't know what. I've heard you say, I'll paraphrase incorrectly, but something about certain works are touched by angels. We've had that experience. Tell me what you meant by it.

And tell me your work that you think was touched by angels. I might think of, well, the book I did called 26 gasoline stations, I thought it was off by itself, and it didn't nod to the world of painting or bookmaking or anything in any respect. And so I thought it was off by itself. So that's, I guess, where the angels live. Maybe that was touched by angels. I don't know. Probably what I was thinking of.

Yeah. I like it. I like thinking about it. Yeah. And then every so often I think about nonverbal communication. You know, how you can always reminded me of when they were going to interview Thelonius Monk for a music magazine. And I think he said, okay, I'll do it if I can bring a friend along with me. And they said, okay, sure.

Yeah, and so the interviewer is saying, Mr. Monk, what do you think about country and Western music? He doesn't say anything. Long period of time in the interview, you know what I said? Mr. Monk, what do you think about cowboy music? You know, country and Western music. Still no answer. And then Monk turns to his friend and says, do you think that guy's hard of hearing? Incredible.

That's amazing. Amazing. What would you say the most beautiful place on earth you've ever been? San Francisco. And I can point to why I'm saying this

because I visited there as a kid back in the late 1940s with my folks and we drove through there and we had some relatives there and so San Francisco So, and every time I go there, I say, this is the most beautiful city in the world. Do you think the hills have something to do with it?

The kind of mystery of it, the Chinatown, the bridges, the Victorian houses. Yeah, the houses and everything about it, it's just got kind of romantic dashal-hammet kind of flavor to it that I just, I really feel like it is the most beautiful city in the world. But then, you know, nature, of course, I mean, places that you go where there's like silence, like the desert, well, that's, that's, yes, that's beautiful, too. Yeah. You never had the calling to move to San Francisco? No. Why do you think? I don't know.

It's better to visit there. Yeah. Like, I love New York, but I go there on my own terms, and I like, I see my friends, and then I get out of town. Yeah. But if I had to live there, I think it would be a different set of circumstances for an artist to live there and then have to bring materials to your studio and get a two by four across town without, you know, and boy, what a issue that is. And I didn't like that. I like the idea of Southern California. Curators, collectors, and artists. Tell me about the mindset of those three different categories of people. Curators, collectors, and artists.

And collectors are a curious kind. They have, you know, their minds are off in different directions. The artist is thinking only of himself, you know, not so much where he fits into this thing, but curators have a particular knowledge of, I was lucky enough to work with the man that is now the director of Museum of Modern Art in New York, Christoph Sharie, and he curated an exhibit in mine that was up about a year and a half ago there

that went to the county museum, and he wanted to see every work that I did, and he only would put it in the exhibit if he could see it in person. He had to see that thing in person. So if I can't go to that collector's house and see it on a wall, well, I'm not interested in borrowing it. I've got to see that thing in person. And so the personal contact with a curator is essential, you know, and he's that way. He's one of those kind of people. Are most curators open to collaboration with the artist? Well, this man certainly was, and he wouldn't put something in the show that I didn't approve of or, you know, why should I care what he puts in his exhibit, But I did kind of, like, have a few choices along the way, and he was worked with me on that.

Great. So he was, I was lucky to have him. Yeah. Are you ever surprised seeing your art up next to other artists? Do you ever get any kind of either a good or bad feeling about it? I mean, I've seen my working exhibits alongside other people, but, and I might get a tug from. I'm a laugh out of it. Yeah.

You know, just the curiosity of these two supposedly thoughtful artists. Yeah. It sounds like you have fun doing what you're doing. Yeah. Yeah, I don't think I would if I didn't have fun with it. No, I do that. So every so often something will come up that requires a lot of labor, and concentration.

So that might make me think and make me want to say, oh, God, I've got to do that now. But I generally, I get with it, and I like it. Would you say that once you have the idea, do you feel in service to the idea? Yes. I've got a notion of what I think the idea is going to be.

Yeah. You know, and then the execution of it will be something else. Sometimes, I don't know which way it's going to go. Do you do sketches? Yeah, I do a lot of little writings and sometimes sketches, and they can be misleading. They can be, they can distort your thinking. But I like, I like to do that, you know, when I'm at a restaurant or something, you know. Yeah. What might be something you would write?

It might be a, lately I've just done, I don't think of doorways, you know, a drawing of a doorway at an angle and what that might be or imagining that as being a bigger work, like a bigger painting. Yeah. As a first step towards a painting. Yeah. Would you say it always starts with something you actually see in the world? Sometimes I'll get an inspiration from other artist's work. Like I started, there's a Danish artist that named Hammershoi, William Hammershoey, he painted these kind of sad looking interior paintings in 1900 or something,

you know. But somehow I saw these, this wainscoting inside of a room and the kind of architecture around the doorway and all that. And I say, I don't know, maybe I'll visit that and see if I can push that along. Yeah. And yet it's going to look nothing like his work, you know, but it'll be a trigger. It's an interesting thing. When you see work that an artist does, it opens possibilities of what can happen. Yeah.

Like, he made a left turn. What happens if we go right? What happens if we go up? Yeah, instead of down, yeah. Yeah. Maybe down is the way to go. Maybe. Well, you can crash going down, can't you?

Yeah, but maybe that's good. Maybe we want to crash. Yeah. You never know. How often do you start something and then decide this is not going to work? Usually it's in the early stage. Yeah. So I don't set aside a canvas and then start on it and then it.

And then it's always a little different. But I can usually stop something early if I don't have some kind of hope for it. Yeah. Most things, if you get off to a poor start, do you find that it corrects and turns into something that you like? Yeah, sometimes it's an accident that, you know, almost like falls on your foot and you don't realize what's happened. And this accident is, damn, it's good, you know. I mean, you put the wrong color on there, but wow, something. is different and something happened that you either learn from or you hit upon or

and you didn't start out that way you didn't you didn't really want that to happen but it's an accident so accidents are great people don't realize that accidents are vital part of things how much of the whole enterprise would you say is intellectual What did Yogi Beres say? Baseball is 99% intellectual, and the other half is physical. Yeah. Tetragramatin is a podcast. Tetragrammatin is a website.

Tetragrammatin is a whole world of knowledge. all within the sphere of tetragrammatine. Counterculture, tetragrammatian, sacred geometry, tetragrammatin, the avant-garde, tetragrammatine, generative art, tetragrammatin, the tarot, tetragrammatian, out-of-print music, tetragrammatin, biodynamic, tetragrammatin, graphic design, tetragrammatin, mythology and magic, tetragrammatine, obscure film, tetragrammatine, beach culture, tetragrammatin, esoteric lectures, lectures, tetragamatin, off the grid living, tetragrammatine, alt, spirituality, tetragrammatin, the canon of fine objects, tetragrammatin, muscle cars, tetragrammatin,

ancient wisdom for a new age. Upon entering, experience the artwork of the day. Take a breath and see where you are drawn. matin.com.