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I exchanged ideas, philosophies, thoughts. I got into fist fights almost with people over ideas. And then along in later years, I found that art was my only means of understanding myself, my only means of gaining any depth was for me to find it out in that studio, to find out what was going on inside me. There was no other catalyst at that moment other than what was going on in that studio. This catalyst had already taken place in these experiences, in these frames of reference through people I knew. I've been fortunate in my life to meet and know most of the outstanding figures of the Negro people. I've been able to be close friends with a number of them. I've been privileged to be friends. People who are thinkers, who have ideas. They have been sort of catalysts to set off things within me. The loves I've had have been catalystic agents. The affairs I've had in the past have been catalystic things. The teaching and working with students have been catalystic things. The communities I've lived in, the states I've lived in, something as foreign as living in Europe for a year, with inability to speak the language of both countries that I was in. This was a catalystic thing. This comes to play when I sit in my studio. My mother, my grandmother, my father, my step-father, all these things. So I can be subjective with all this as a frame of reference to be subjective and
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