There have been several people in my life. Jay was one of them. My son's mother was another. Catherine Conlin (Hedrick's current partner, nicknamed Wiggy) is one of them. And they sort of run in 10-year cycles. The '90s was one of them. Two thousand is Wiggy. These people helped me. If you don't have some sort of support, it's hard to do stuff. Each one of those people were great people.

My career has never really taken off in the usual sense. I just couldn't take New York seriously. When Jay and I were in that big show at the New York Museum of Modern Art with Jasper Johns, Rauschenberg and those famous people, they sent us tickets and said, "Come to the opening, we'll put you up and show you New York." I sent a representative. We didn't want to go to New York; we hated the place. We thought it was arrogant.

I don't think of this as a profession; I'm a used-car salesman.

I don't believe in this European notion, "The materials got me -- I went to bed and I woke up and the painting was there." Jackson Pollock is a perfect example of somebody who gets loaded and paints, and that's fine. I understand how that could happen, but for me that's an alien idea. I think the mind is more important than the heart. I like control; I like using one's mind to make decisions.

I'm a politician. I'm trying to make these paintings do what politicians should be doing.

I have contempt for style. People who have gone to professional art school should have control over a variety of styles. If I have something to say I think I have the skills to do it. I can paint with a 000 brush as well as a house-painter brush. I know about color; I know what color can do, and I know what color can't do.

Color is really a superfluous element in most paintings. It isn't used except to titillate the eyes. The lack of color is an important thing. It's what you paint out that counts. There is no such thing as taste, except in middle-class designery.

When 9/11 happened I knew we were going to have a fascist state in the United States and we were going to go to war. And if I have one fundamental conviction, it's that I do not want Americans killed, or anyone killed, for that matter. I don't want young men and women sent to war by old men who aren't capable of doing anything else besides becoming senators or presidents. I don't use black oil for no reason.

It's not that I don't want to sell my paintings, it's just that people who can afford them don't deserve them, and people who deserve them can't afford them. So I give them away to people who deserve them. And sometimes they give me recompense. If I know they're going to get a good home and not be stacked up in the barn, it can sometimes be handy. I don't do my work for Western culture. (Many of Hedrick's paintings are owned by museums and individuals across the country.) If I could afford it, I think I would buy some of them back.

The artist's website: www.wallyhedrick.com