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age 3-

A:  Well, I was a child. I was probably not more than two or three years old.

Q:  But you do have a distinct recollection ofthat?

A:  Oh, yes, yes. I hadn't been there before and I hadn't...the tracks of wheels in the road were very interesting to me and I sat right down in it and I suppose I began to try to, ah, eat it.

My mother came around by the hedge. I always remembered the expression on her face. It was an expression I hadn't seen before and I think she was frightened because she saw I was right there where any vehicle or animal coming along might have run over me. She picked me up under her arm and walked off with me. I, with my head and feet hanging down, very uncomfortable. It is one of my very early memories.

Q:  What was the first drawing you ever made?

A:  It was a drawing of a man on a paper bag and I was trying to make him stand bending over.  And I couldn't make him bend so that it felt right to me. I worked so hard at it.

Q:  Do you remember when you first decided you wanted to be an artist?

A:  Yes, and I don't know why. I've never been able to imagine whey I got such an idea because I was very young.

Q:  What was the occasion?

A:  I don't know. I just made up my mind I was going to be a painter.

Q:  Did you ever tell anybody? Your mother or father?

A:  I doubt it.  I don't remember.

Q:  You went to school in Madison and that included art work too, didn't it, as a child?

A:  Well, I was sent to Madison when I was 12. To a convent and it was the only year of my school that I felt that I learned anything. I suppose I learn a few things. The ideas. But it didn't mean anything to me.

Q:  Did you like school?

A:  No, I hated it.

Q:  In your book you talk about going to the Art Institute in Chicago and one of the earliest classes that you went to was the anatomy class. And it comes through that it bored you to death. Is that true?