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the art world really wasn't in New York. Regional painting seemed to be the thing that everyone was doing. It wasn't what I was doing. I think I was mostly influenced by Picasso and Matisse at that time. But it was when I was at Rutgers that I became interested in [[strikethrough]] . . .[[/strikethrough]] I was always interested in the New York art world, but it was then that I became close enough physically to become involved with it. I knew Allan Kaprow and Bob Watts and George Segal who were there, and through them met Claes Oldenberg and Bob Witman, Lucas Samaras, various other people who were involved with Happenings at that time as well as art works. That's the history of me; I moved to New York in 1963.

AS: How did you arrive at your style?

RL: I had the idea of painting banal subject matter of some kind or other, very standard cliché work; not the comic strips, but other things. It had just been in my mind for a while. I had done a few drawings involving ten dollar bills [[strikethrough]] . . .[[/strikethrough]] some things involving Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse a few years earlier in a sort of Abstract Expressionist context. That would be about 1957. I did a few drawings and things,