Eric Holzman: I live in SoHo, in Manhattan. I was born in the Bronx. When I was 5, I moved to Yonkers into a ”development ”. These ”developments”, made for the families of men who’d returned from the Second World War, were built on what had been farmland. They soon became the suburbs. Houses were built one after another and each family got one little tree in the front yard; it was surreal. Gangs of rough older kids from the Bronx were roaming around with nothing to do. It was a scary place, but so was the city. I wasn’t too good at defending myself. Still there were lots of boys and we always had enough for two teams. There were woods in every direction, so I found a sanctuary. By the time I was 12 or 13, things began to spiral out of control. I learned to play drums and made a Rock and Roll band. A year or 2 later the Beatles appeared and suddenly the lights went on. So I survived Middle school and High school, and thrived actually. Then I went to Tyler, where John Moore, a wonderful painter and teacher taught. He and his wife Sandy were very kind to me and initiated me to the painting life. Summers I went to Skowhegan and the Studio school. Then to Yale, where I made dear friends and had 3 terrific artists as teachers, William Bailey, Lester Johnson, and Al Held. It was intense; they were pretty tough. Well not Lester, he was actually something of a delight. I think his black paintings, not very known now, are some of the best from the late 50’s and 60’s. After Yale I moved to NY with my girlfriend. There was a fire, and lots of ups and downs. My classmate Joe Santore was there as a friend. I became best friends with Rudy Burckhardt. Other friends like the painter Maury Colton and I worked as laborers, which I grew to hate and I finally started teaching at 40. Life got better. 35 years after school, I finished my first mature body of work. I wondered how I had done it. Not the work, which was good, but how I’d been able to stay at it.