Notes on painting (from a current studio notebook)

I don't really want to discover painting as predictable.  I also don't want painting to reflect some facet of real life or real culture or contemporary reality--suggesting of course that painting is not real in comparison.  Of course painting will grapple with reality but I don't want painting--my paintings--to be a shadow, a facsimile or a tame approximation of lived life.  Instead I want painting to rear up on its hind legs and BE what it is.  My painting is most interesting to me when it stands fully alone and strongly alone.  The paintings are best when, knowing I made them, I am nonetheless still incredulous about how they came to exist in the world.  They are very separate and real and upright and full and I cannot take my eyes off of them--what I just describe is not a common occurrence but an ideal and rare one.  Most often I am faced with the unavoidable evidence that yes, I made this.

So painting is like a river running parallel to my living.  It never stops, is constantly moving along, and I periodically step in and fumble along for awhile until I get a handle--my bearings.  And then when I am upright and full I can move along with the river--and painting tells me how to see the world anew.