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12/16/1993 14:444 2124313252   STEINBAUM KRAUSS      PAGE

EF: So that's where the legends come from.
BB: Yes.
EF: In your paintings there seem to several fields of action, and they interact in a special way. Where do you usually start a painting? 
BB: I draw the shacks first. I decide where they're going, sometimes by the size of the paper; or the way I'm standing can dictate it. If I'm close to the edge, the shack I draw is probably going to be larger than if I stood somewhere else, or maybe not.
EF: Your shacks don't seem rooted. They tilt and fly in an abstract atmosphere.
BB: But they are set in something, in their own soup.
EF: Does that mean in their own interior world?
BB: I think it means a middle southern coastal world which is almost like a given. I would expect it to be known without my having to put it there before you. When Marion Buchanan's mother, who I certainly called my grandmother, would ask what's for supper, I would tell her and I listed everything and I always said rice. About the tenth time she said, "You don't have to say rice, we know we're going to have that." So I don't want to put in trees. It depends where I am or what I'm thinking about and the trees may be different or the same. If you want to have trees you can have them, but I just want you to see the basic solid stuff. The rice is already there, and I just assume that you ought to know that the trees are already there.
EF: What about the childlike scribbling?
BB: Walter Buchanan had a series of strokes and before he died he started to write letters to his sister, Carrie, who was my grandmother. He was trying to say something to her that he considered very important. Some of the words were legible and some were in this kind of script that later I tried to imitate. At first I didn't see

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