To me, painting will always be a meditative process. Many of the images I paint are given to me during meditation, or come during those moments between worlds, when one is just waking up. I don’t try to figure out their meanings, I just paint the vision. Time stops when I start mixing colors; intuition guides my strokes. Painting is all about discovery, making connections between the subconscious mind, the hand, and the canvas. There’s always a surprise when I put down the brush and move back, always more and less there than I intended. At that point I begin to see what the muse was saying, what the painting is meant to depict, and I work to emphasize that spirit.
Years ago, while meditating in my living room, I opened my eyes and looked out to the street where a friend was standing in the yard. I saw that person connected to a nearby tree with infinitesimal lines of light, and those same lines connected to a bird in the sky and to a child playing down the block, and to the sun and back to me sitting in my living room. Nothing is unconnected. I was able to sense the whole. I have tried to paint in this light, to include this sense of connection in my work ever since.
