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fashioned shades...you remember...well, it looked like canvas. Somewhere I'd seen, or I knew, that artists painted on canvas. So I took down the shade, and I started painting on this green shade with the messy oil. What was the result picture-wise was a disaster. And what resulted later in terms of my gluteus maximus was a disaster. My mother took care of that when she got home and saw the shade all messed up. So the day was a little dramatic, to say the least. But all of this, the paint of even just learning to pain, wasn't too important, in this case. I tell you if I share anything in common with the artists of today, particularly the artists of a couple generations younger than I, the common interests that we share is the oneness that we share with each other. On this thing that I had stacked against me, I wanted to stay and try and find what I was, who I was. I tried to fine some identity with life, some identity with my family. It was not only the educational background or what...it was during the depression. Hunger was not uncommon in my family. My family was my mother...my real father I knew very little about. My mother was from Mississippi, and we had little contact with the family in Mississippi. Occasionally, we would hear of someone being killed in my family in Mississippi. And it was in a town in Mississippi called Ridgeland, Mississippi...Ridgeland, Mississippi is a little place outside of Jackson, Mississippi and if you

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