My friends and neighbors were always fixing their cars. Soldiers who felt restless wanted to work on something, and they understood cars. Me, I like to look at cars but I was never really a mechanic.
All my artistic response comes from American things, and I guess I've always had a weakness for heroic imagery.
I'd read about Los Angeles and this fact stuck in my mind: that the city gained 1,000 new people every day. In 1956! A thousand people every day! I felt: 'I want to be part of that.'
I knew I wanted to be some kind of artist from about 12. I met a neighbour who drew cartoons, and I had an idea I wanted to be a cartoonist - or something that involved Indian ink, at any rate.
The big pay-off was to work as an artist and gain some shred of respect from your friends, who were also artists. But there was never any notion that you could make a living out of art. On the rare occasions you had a gallery show, and sold a little work, well, that was just gravy.
Part of ego is displaying the ego. I've got ego, and I think I'm really good. But maybe I fall down in trying to sell it to people.
Traveling is irritating to me, but not driving. Going to the airport makes me nervous, but when I set out to just take a leisurely drive, it's blue skies and puffy clouds and time.
Traveling to Europe and traveling in the U.S.A. was a much different experience. 'On the Road' exemplified everything glamorous that was happening on this side of the planet. The book puts off some kind of sweet melody - part hope for the world, part nostalgic.
I'm very stodgy. I'm always looking at old photos of California and Los Angeles, knowing that what I'm looking at is now full of houses. There used to be vacant lots in Los Angeles, now all taken up by three-storey boxes - it's all getting infilled.
I'm interested in glorifying something that we in the world would say doesn't deserve being glorified. Something that's forgotten, focused on as though it were some sort of sacred object.
The difference between psychedelia and digitalia ages will seem like a smooth blending in years to come and will be a mere blip on the screen.
When I drive, I check out everything I see, and just taking in all those observations helps me think. So I draw and write a lot as I drive, and I know that's dangerous, but I manage to do it off to the side, with my notes on the seat.
When you're on a highway, viewing the western U.S. with the mountains and the flatness and the desert and all that, it's very much like my paintings.
The one thing I miss is hitchhiking. Now there's no more of that. When's the last time you saw a hitchhiker? It's not that I consider it a great sport, but it was my way of seeing the country. The open road, especially in the western United States, is still very pristine, but everything else around it has changed.