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C.K. Well I could go into a bunch of artistic connections and it would
take forever, but relatively little art in the family. Although I have
a famous distant relative who is an American Impressionist.
M.V. So there’s a little bit there?
C.K. Yes.
M.V. Did you then go to college to study art?
C.K. No I didn’t. I ran away from high school to Mexico before I graduated.
I came back and graduated from high school, and then I ran away again
to San Francisco and I came back and did one year of Junior College and
then I never went back to school.
M.V. But when you were at Junior College? Was it art you were studying?
C.K. English
M.V. And then you had a period when you dropped out?
C.K. Well that was it really. I started to drop out in 1965. That
was the first time when I tried to leave home and I didn’t succeed to
fully drop out, legally, until I was eighteen. That’s the age when
boys become men in America. Up till then I pretty much had to do what
my parents wanted me to do. At eighteen I no longer had to abide
by their suggestions and rules. So that’s when I proceeded to enter the
'counter culture'.
M.V. Then you were living in a rural situation?
C.K. Well, first I went to San Francisco and I was doing psychedelic
light shows for rock concerts. That was in 1967. I moved back up to Washington
State to a rural area near the Canadian border in 1967. Right before the
‘Summer of Love’ they call it in America.
M.V.Do you feel yourself very much part of that scene?
C.K. Yes, really.
M.V. Except that though you were dropping out. The people you were
dropping with were part of it.
C.K. Yeah, we were all part of the youth 'counter culture'.
M.V. You started painting then? Or not for a while?
C.K. I had my first exhibition in San
Francisco after I lost my job as a light show technician, because I was
working in a club and wasn’t twenty one. So I started painting and I had
an exhibition at the Vorpal Gallery in San Francisco in 1967. My painting
followed the influence of Morris Graves who is one of America's
20th century modern masters. He's a little obscure now, but if you
pick up any book about important American artists he's usually in it.
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