I'd rather do anything than make commercial art. I didn't go to school for art. Making art has certain advantages for me but they would never be in commercial direction.
Raymond PettibonIn my time, we had little league and junior league or whatever - before that, there's the sandlot. Kids played baseball wherever you can make a space. We played tackle-football on the street. Now we play basketball in the studio. We have a hoop. But we also have a pitching machine.
Raymond PettibonArt can be a kind of therapeutic, or kind of a fantasy life, or wish fulfillment...o r creating this alternate universe. Art gives me the freedom to do that.
Raymond PettibonThere are lots of guns and action in my drawings, and part of that is just to make them more interesting. Because you can go through a whole film and it's mostly talking heads and little else until the action scenes, and they're usually violence or physical stuff. Same with baseball, or any sport. Except I find pitching and batting are visually very striking.
Raymond PettibonIt's an extreme to go from an artist like myself to a commercial artist with art directors looking over your shoulder, or any other knucklehead telling you what your art should look like.
Raymond PettibonMy drawing came out of editorial-style cartoons. Music was one thing and art was another, and there weren't really any standards for my art. My work was just drawings. They weren't done with any aspirations of becoming a part of punk scene. They weren't about punk. They were just collections of drawings, some of which I xeroxed and sold.
Raymond Pettibon