Ty Warner

To this day, people are still talking about the Coral Casino's parties of the '30s, '40s, '50s - complete with antidotes of Errol Flynn's swan dives, Marlon Brando's secret cigar smoking spots, and Ester Williams' Aquacades.

Now I'm old... maybe I'm still an eccentric hippie. There's a wonderful freedom in the eccentricity - you can go places, you can be wacky, and you don't have to be constrained. I think that's why people are eccentric - eccentricity is a weapon... and it's great!

The thrill of a photo-realist painter is if you get really close to the painting, it looks just like a photograph. Whereas in my case, if you get close to my paintings, they totally fall apart - so I'm about as far from a photo-realist as it gets.