I got a bachelor’s degree in art, and I got a master’s degree in fine arts from Pratt Institute, with a major in printmaking and a minor in painting. And you would think that I would know what I was doing
But it was the seventies when I got my master’s degree, and people were doing things like painting themselves and rolling around on canvas. I didn’t really see myself doing this. It wasn’t my world, and I got to the point where I really had to say, “What am I going to do? I have always seen myself as being an artist, but this gallery scene, the fine arts that I am involved with, just doesn’t seem to be the route I would be going in.” I had to examine why I always wanted to pick up that pencil and draw.
I realized that ever since I was a little kid, that’s what I used to do. And what were those sixth-grade paintings? They were story illustrations. Each one told a story. They were characters. They were fun. They were humorous. And I realized that I wanted to do artwork that was fun to do. You don’t see many people walking around a gallery and chuckling. And I realized that I wanted a chuckle.
You can do a painting, and it might end up being on somebody’s wall, but if you do a book, it goes out to the world. It goes out in multiple copies; it’s printed. It’s in libraries. It’s in homes. Somebody can have it here and there and everywhere. And very often, when I’m in a bookstore a family will come in and say, “Oh, we’ve just been reading your book, and we read it every night.”
There’s nothing like that. There’s nothing like the fact that you’ve actually become part of somebody’s family life.
