Early Eighties

I had now been in NYC for ten years hardly going out except to Bridgehampton for summer sojourns, where I kept up painting out of doors until about 1978..

I was beginning to teach at UCSB in Santa Barbara, CA.

I met John McCracken there in 1980. Another artist David Trowbridge talked about about Brice Marden alot.

I was friends with Hank Pitcher a figurative painter who I had met through Paul Georges.

There was alot of talk back and forth though abstract painters mainly felt figurative artists to be backward.



As I said before this was Schnabel's secret to bridge that gap.

Marden was a regular at the Micky Ruskin bars down town and the figurative element for Julian was an irreverent intrusion to the minimal abstract element, like a bull in a china shop with moose antlers, people said. Finally the atmosphere Julian created ended up influencing even Marden.