We don't necessarily need so many artists. I recommend that many of the people who think they want to be artists should go into the American Friends Service Committee, or do government outreach to communities that don't have water, or that need seeds or ecological assistance. It would create a system in which people with engaged sensibilities and potential insight assist instead of imposing. I think it could leap right out of the art world into wonderful community action.

My teachers always said, "You're very talented, but don't set your heart on art. You're only a girl." I was inspired by Virginia Woolf in 1960, but they wouldn't let me write about her. They said she was a trivializer. I also wanted to do a paper on Simone de Beauvoir, and my philosophy teacher said, "Why would you write about the mistress? Write about the master." That was Sartre.

The people from where I grew up have no appreciation for Paleolithic rocks or menstrual calendars. I'm a retriever of lost iconographies. But I had real training and have deep discipline, and I believe in it. Too much of the work I see today is just cultural junk. It's very superficial and has no rigor. It doesn't address the dynamic and real politics of an aesthetic structure.

I grew up doing farm work, and there's a deep connection between the demands of farming and the demands of art creation. My sense of space and material has a lot to do with having been a chicken-killer and working with cows.

It's really hard to have a fair discussion when you're faced with militarism, aggression, and greed. The militarists do not want dialogue. They want what they want. They're psychotic. They're greedy, they're narcissistic, and they're dangerous.

I'm a painter. I'm still a painter and I will die a painter. Everything that I have developed has to do with extending visual principles off the canvas.

I'm used to working with neglect and misunderstanding, so this has been really challenging. It's a different psychic realm. The Lion did not land easily here.