I was thinking today about the artist. I hear students, artists, talk about the empty feeling they have, the dry atmosphere of mind and soul, which brings about procrastination and lack of vision and little amount of work or nothing at all.

I think when one is still and listens they will know that they are a living creature, they will know and believe that art is more than plastic pleasure, more than commercial gain, higher than any movement or canon or class, and will come to believe in the possibility of painting while in pain, the possibility of drawing on your dinner napkin and tucking in a couple of dollars as a tip for the waitress.

I think we must believe that we are living and breathing and that some things are visually important, crucial, for all of us to see with our own eyes.

In a world of tv and screens and flip phones, etc., one sees flashes and patches of colour every second. I offer painting as a new way of seeing through to the world, as a way of grinding down into the roots, into our own roots and bones maybe, painting as the medium of texture and glob and thickness of faces and words.