DAMIEN HIRST

«After getting out of school, Damien hung around for a year or so, not knowing what to do with himself, until it occurred to him, to go to art school. He had always liked to draw. He took the foundation course at Jacob Kramer College, an art school in Leeds. After that he applied to two professional art schools, St Martin's in London, and Cardiff College in Wales-and was turned down by both of them. At loose ends again, he got a doctor friend to let to let him sit in on his anatomy course
at the morgue. Damien did life drawings of the corpses. «That's when I got interested in things being more real» he said.

Calvin Tomkins
Lives of the Artists p.7