I do not plan a painting ahead of time. What I paint, and how I paint it, is guided by the ebb and flow of my painting ideas. When a painting idea appears on the canvas I grab it and vigorously push it in its own direction, independently of what came before or what I previously had in mind. It has its own life, and I respect that. A fundamental change, even re-doing the entire work, can happen as long the painting is in my possession. Which means a work generally takes a long time to finish. "It ain't over till it's over".

The painting process starts to become interesting, exciting to me when there is opportunity for heavy use of my imagination. My imagination craves, demands, participation in the painting process: selecting out what to keep and what to discard, what to emphasize and what to minimize, what to hold right-side up or upside down, disregarding and transforming "reality" into whatever suits my painterly purpose. I work in a bizarre geometry of space and mass where space is portrayed as shallow or deep, mass as small or humongous. Through this distortion of the plastic means I wish to communicate to the viewer a particular feeling that drives me, or an idea, shifting emphasis from what is ordinarily seen in everyday life to an abruptly different, perhaps shocking and confrontational, perception.

My paint handling is loose, restless, deliberately irregular, sometimes dense, uneven, perhaps at times, bravura. I do not want the creative quality of my work to be blindsided by the look of the hardworking perfection of craftsmanship.

Often I explore painting's language of abstraction and figuration through many differently handled versions of the same subject.

This artist is not looking to give pleasure and comfort to the viewer as much as to forward a vision that the artist holds strongly, passionately. He is not courting the viewer's comfort and satisfaction by appealing to previously held ideas of what was or what should be. He wishes to show alternate painting ideas even if they inadvertently offend everyday esthetic sensibilities. Viewing my work is not for entertainment. It is for an active sharing of ideas & feelings.