The very fact of painting puts a distance between you and what you are painting. It is in the nature of creativity to work in a space of discovery – a space of tacit knowledge – allowing for a glimpse into another dimension.

There is a silent moment in painting when we experience an absolute, total intelligence in the work through which everything comes together. The logic that develops is stronger than any emotion.

My interest lies in the discovered structure, the inner life of a painting, and in those elements in art that are dependent on the workings of intelligence as well as the senses.

Painting grants you the freedom to learn, to test, to question, to sharpen your perception. It gradually yields answers and unexpectedly offers the possibility of resolution.

The simultaneity of presence and absence through which you build a painting and its content feels impossible, inaccessible, for long stretches of time. I want to isolate and extract the unique quality of each work, to find a reality that I can’t deny or make unreal and arrive at a resolution that recaptures the original purity and grace.

Works of art push out into regions that are exposed, open, infinitely vulnerable. Their integrity can often be threatened by the casualness and superficialities of reproduction, both aesthetically and conceptually. Copyright acknowledges this vulnerability and resists the uncaring and inappropriate vandalism that misuse represents.

THIS CHANGED MY LIFE

The list is long but starts with Mahler, moves through Shostakovich, Thomas Bernhard and Paul Celan, and ends with my life-long love for Dostoevsky.