They asked me to do a show, and I was planning on showing my figure paintings. But my friends told me I shouldn't - the paintings were good but a little old-fashioned. They said, "Why don't you show the other stuff?" I had also been making rather strange objects, more in the Freudian tradition.

I am for an art that grows up not knowing it is art at all.

I don't do abstract art because I don't find it as interesting as I do subjects and depictions.

Duchamp is known for calling a thing art, rather than making it. A lot of that is picked up in pop art, too.

I got a little studio in Chicago and practiced. I realized I had to earn some money. So I went to work for an advertising agency where my job was mostly drawing insects for a company that sold an insecticide spray.

Everything I do is completely original-I made it up when I was a kid.

I was always interested in drawing. As a child, I started my own country, which was called Neubern. It was located in the South Atlantic. I did the documentation of Neubern in great detail. I drew everything that was there, all the houses and all the cars and all the people. We even had a navy and an air force. I spent a lot of time drawing.