Painting as painting preoccupies me. Within that activity sits an appreciation for the creative tradition in Western civilization.

Making art is an organic process not easily defined. Beginning intuitively, the first “line” becomes the fifth, because its presence relates to the four sides of the canvas or paper. After that early stage, whatever it may be, a color, form, mark, line, etc. is placed on the face of the material, establishing a relationship, and the work tells me what it wants.

My approach is trial and error.

Through the act of painting or drawing, my two primary practices, worlds open up, collide, collapse, and conclusions are agreed upon, creating a piece’s pentimenti.

Materials like charcoal, pencil, and paint have always possessed, from my early practices, an inherent alchemical, transmutative quality cauterizing a bond between the internal (self) and the external (reality). In a sense, some may see it as shamanistic or folk art. Maybe it’s both. That sensitivity keeps me working with dry and wet mediums, remaining fascinated by their outcomes and guided by the notion of this ineffable presence in art-making that arrests my imagination.

Transforming the figure-ground relationship by eliminating the extraneous, highlighting what captures and tantalizes, the work becomes weighted with layers of history. From that initial touch flow memories, blissfulness, habits, comedy, tendencies, or grudging directions. Even aversions are forged during the process, and I go with it, watching it unfold.

The resulting pieces exist without specific narratives, reverberating between visual episodic memory, with sensibilities toward poetry, music, sound, and stillness. I think of these works as “Ghost” paintings.