“I think everything before Michigan State was figurative. I went to Michigan State because Abraham Ratner had gone there, and Abraham Ratner, of course, was as close to German expressionist as anyone that I might study with. When I got the Danforth Study Grant, I went to Michigan State for two reasons: I went to study with Abraham Ratner and because they had good housing for families and by this time, I had a family.”

“I was painting in the graduate students studio and I dropped a jar of cadmium red paint which is fantastically expensive cause I didn’t have a lot of money. I . . .started tearing out papers from the big can of newsprint I had and wiping the stuff up. When I unfolded the paper, I found it was more interesting to me than what I was working on. So I borrowed some automobile lacquer from Ken ??? . . .and  glued the paper to the painting . . . I was studying with Murray Jones at the time and Murray Jones had just come back from Japan and he was doing absolutely lovely paintings…or not paintings–collages with Japanese paper. So I bought some Japanese paper, and I started doing collages too, although with paint in them.  Murray was worried . . . that he had over-influenced me and he called me in and talked to me. He looked at what I had done. And he said, “No, actually you’re combining collage and painting, and what I am doing is purely collage.”

“I had friend that was using acrylic, I switched to acrylic, and found it was clear and worked like lacquer except it was water based and I didn’t have to buy all that awful . . .  lacquer thinner, I was really lucky that I did.”