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Q: Do you mind those being shown someday?

A; You get over minding many things. No, I don't mind anymore. It's someone [strikethrough] else. You have another life.
 
Q: What do you think have been the happiest years of your life?

A: I think when I think of years that have interested me most. I think you're only happy momentarily. 

Q: Your paintings are full of skulls like the ram's head with hollyhock. 

A: That was at the ranch here.  I had painted those hills in the sunlight many times and I'd failed. But, we had a rainy day and I got them from my window. And I thought they were pretty fine. I don't know where I got the head from. Anyway, it all just sort of grew together. 

Q: Why did you put a flower right along side of it? Your critics have asked about that a million times. 

A: I probably picked one going from the place where I ate to where I was going to sleep.

Q: Any other reason for it?

A: No...it was pleasant to look at.

Q: The same in this one called, "Summer Days. " It looks like a deer skull with flowers just beneath the head.

A: That little head had been on one of the vi[strikethrough]as in the patio here for almost...for moths before I discovered it. It was so close to the viga and the wall that I didn't see it. And I took it clear over to the other house there to paint it. And, I sat on the porch over there and painted it. And the flowers at the bottom are just about what you would find blooming around here in the summertime. 

The Indian brush here has faded out. It looks like the color of tomato soup, it doesn't ...it isn't red like it is up in the high mountains. And I got the hills under it. Anyway, it was a picture of the summertime. 

Q: It comes through to me as being both very vivid, clear, and yet, at the same time a bit of an abstraction in it, too.

A: Yes, the things don't belong together. But there is no reason why you can't put them together if you want to. Painting is one area that you are pretty free, you know, you can do what you please.

Q: Do you think a long time before you put together a whole piece or does it come to you as you go?

A: I've gotten so that I look...I wait a long time to start at anything because I know I'll have to do it over again.