I don't think I ever really decided I was an artist. I went to college to learn how to think and look at art. In the end, I developed a more sophisticated misunderstanding of art.
Take two paintings by the same artist, one has a signature and the other doesn't. The signed picture is generally more valuable. The signature is almost graffiti or a tagging system, yet it can become more important than the subject.
The artist has the power to signoff the work by deconstructing the work itself: I've finished this work now and I'll sign it and relegate the painting to simply something that services my signature. The painting becomes the colorful backdrop of the signature.
Vintage was brilliant!
When I was in college I thought of making up a fictive artist and giving him a name and a body of work. Eventually I came around to the idea of using my own name, which had this strange distancing effect, similar to using a found object. Being a Turk was quite interesting because in a sense it was like being a foreigner.
