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Now, why was I thinking about Africa in particular? Two things: it wasn't so much about the culture, although I was obsessed with the art from Ife; I was thinking about the terrain and the light. I had seen that terrain and that light in the movies, and in books, and in Life magazine. So I thought I'd like to sit on the savanna and just do some work, hang loose and see what happened. Well, when I got to Africa, it didn't work that way. First of all, the way I work is so physical and different that it would have been just too distracting. I couldn't work outside, on the ground like that. And Africa was much bigger than I thought. So, there I was in Africa; it was 1974. I got a place at the University of Ife in Nigeria. They gave me a studio, and at that point, I was still working in pastels. More and more, I felt pastels couldn't do what I wanted, and I started taking rocks and crushing the pastels and mixing in paint. Then I did paintings, and again, they looked different, and I realized they had the colors of Africa. Later, when I went ti Taos, New Mexico, I did a lot of work and saw that the experience had influenced it unconsciously. It was not just the brush stroke but also the notion of movement that took on another dimension as I drove across the Southwest. I also noticed the effects of my trip to Brittany, in some of my paintings of that time that obviously resemble the landscape and my experience there. Maybe going there, being in the car, moving around, all merges into one, right? All I had to do was accept myself; that kind of thing gets into my work. 

So the stroke is in the experience?

Yes, but not only that. I just do a stroke in New York; that means it has to work. It doesn't matter. But what I notice is that if I'm in a place that's absolutely new to me and I'm in awe of it, it enters into the work in a different way. Even if it's just broken down in a few areas, I can snese it. When I went to Martinique in the Caribbean, it had a certain kind of magic. The work I did there felt great. We sold out all these works in 1982 at the Randall Gallery in New York. I could never copy those things again. 

For me, the stroke is all at once. One of the advantages of that is it can be done very quickly. But there's also the risk factor; if you don't hit it right, it's all wrong. Now I don't mean you make great art all the time this way, but you can cover the surface immediately. With a big push broom--whether it's good or bad art--you caan go straight across the canvas just like that. I really like the idea of risky immediacy. When it's big, it's almost as if you're roller skating across the canvas. It's like a magnification of a fragment; that also happens. I used to make a track forty-eight inches wide and just do a big stroke. Painting is work; it's like going to work, like a mechanic.