I have left this page of my website blank  for some time.  Like many artists, I find it extremely difficult to find words to express 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.  The following I know to be true:

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.  Indeed, when the first person remarked to me that I paint things so much larger than life, my reaction was genuine confusion.  I had painted that fruit or flower exactly the size that it had to be on the canvas. 

Subject is a curious subject.  Sometimes, I think I could paint the same still life for the rest of my life.  It is only my thought that no-one else would find that interesting that stops me from doing so.  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. 

I never purposely or directly paint my interior world - of feelings and thoughts and strong political views, etc.  However, I believe it impossible to not bring all of me to painting.  I think it also impossible to paint with integrity 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.