In 1958 I finally found a large enough apartment on the Lower East Side, where I reverted to figure painting. I drew and painted quite a lot of figures and nudes. People would come and pose for me.

I got a job as a dishwasher in Oakland, and I would draw all day. It was nice because the lady who ran the boardinghouse where I worked let me live there for nothing if I gave her some drawings every week - mostly park drawings of birds and such.

I am an immigrant in a sense. What happened was that my father was stationed in New York when my mother became pregnant, and she said, "I've got to go to Sweden so this child can be born there, because you don't have any idea where you're going to be transferred next."

Ox-Bow was a very free place, very open. You could do whatever you wanted to do.

The main reason for the colossal objects is the obvious one, to expand and intensify the presence of the vessel - the object.

I like food because you can change it. I mean, there is no such thing as a perfect lamb chop; you can make all types of lamb chops. And that's true of everything. And people eat it and it changes and disappears.

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