Page 34 - Studio International - February 1968

Yes. He got me interested in oil painting, in 1952. He figures focussing at the viewer, criticizing the viewer and
advised me to get out of town as soon as possible, go to vice-versa. The viewer would have to make an effort
New York City. And I did. about looking at it, an effort towards it, which is in-
volved in criticism, and not pass it off or say, 'I don't
Before that? like it' or 'I know what I like'.
I wasn't interested in anything much. I was interested It may be a questionable picture. One idea is about
in cattle raising and motorcycle riding.... Around 1948 I appreciation, which doesn't lie in the picture being a
won a high school scholarship to go to art school for four beautiful design or something known as art. It's about
Saturdays. I remember making my first painting out of getting yourself together to press on, even if it's not very
gouache, a still life. I never had any concept of anything. appealing or very appetizing, or if it's done in what would
I didn't know what a still life was. Actually I made a seem an old-fashioned manner. In the absence of design,
couple of good ones; they were honest and straight and in the face of being an antique-looking picture format, it's
the colour was right. One was an old engine motor block, really about someone making an effort toward under-
with an engine fan on it, and a head gasket, some junk standing, which is criticism. So instead of saying, '0, it's
and an old piece of cloth.... a beautiful design'— because in the current sense it
There was a teacher there who had just come back doesn't seem to be very beautiful or lovely or banal—it
from Paris, in 1948, and he said to me, 'Why is it you keeps bothering me.
don't ever make anything abstract?' I didn't even know One time I went to see a pornographic sex film. It was
what the word meant; I thought it was something to do fifteen episodes and the technique of the film-maker
with real estate abstract. He told me what it was, and I seemed to be like some of the avant-garde films I'd seen.

said, `No, I make everything as realistic as I can.' I Front lawn 1964, oil on canvas
remember two people doing abstract paintings, teachers 62 x 180 in., Coll: Mrs Ethel Kraushar
who had been to Paris. No one in the midwest was inter-
Facing page, Circles of confusion I 1965-6
ested in abstract art at that time at all. I did a few
lithograph, 38+ x 28 in.
abstract paintings in 1952. I think I have a couple of Coll: Mr and Mrs M. H. Rapp, Toronto
them; that's all beside the point....
Let's jump ahead. In Growth plan the figures are not
bigger than life-size. Isn't that unusual in your work?
That's right. It isn't a permanent retraction. It's
another irritation, another direction. The attempt to
make the impersonal thing disappear using currently
realistic things is difficult, so I revert and change and
just do them.

This picture was originally called Nine critics, wasn't it?
Yes. It isn't an analogy to art critics. It's a matter of the