Like many artists, I find it extremely difficult to express in words why I make art or what artmaking means in my life.   I suspect that I am also like most artists in believing that my work speaks for itself or there is no point in making it.  

I become increasingly disconnected from the world around me and the people I most care about if I do not spend large chunks of time creating something with my hands.    Sight is the strongest sense for me and I come to know the truth about my world by painting it, by drawing it, by sculpting it.   Maybe there are no abstract painters..... we are all painting or drawing what we actually see.  I do not make this comment lightly.  For example, I mostly draw and paint still lifes and mostly the "subjects" of  my paintings are larger than life.  But they do not seem so to me when I paint them.   I paint that fruit or flower exactly the size that it has to be on the canvas. 

Subject is a curious subject.  Sometimes, I think I could paint the same still life over and over for the rest of my life.  I certainly cannot predict what will appeal to me and seem incapable of producing a work of any integrity if the subject has not reached out and gripped me.  For this reason, I do not accept commissions.

I never purposely or directly paint my interior world - of feelings and thoughts and strong political views, etc.  Nor do I begin a painting from my imagination.  However, I believe it impossible to not bring all of me to painting.  I think it also impossible to paint if I am distracted by that internal life WHILE I am painting. 

I frequently finish a painting and am in awe of having done it.  I have no doubt that some spirit who is a much 'better' artist than I am has been present in the act of creation.  Knowing this, unfortunately, does not prevent me from suffering a plague of doubts about my relative abilities as an artist.  It seems both can coexist.

Making art is the hardest thing I have ever done.  And it makes my heart sing.