Painting has changed my life. It expresses my personal reaction to what I see in line, color and texture, saying what I can't say in words.

The strength of these elements becomes a force with which I must reckon. My focus is on exploration and experimentation, so I am constantly finding myself in unknown territory, where there are no rules, and I have to create the reality.

It is a freedom fraught with struggle. I look at a painting and want to control the color, but it won't sit still. Yet I love the fight—the illustion that I can control the colors and images, giving in to their power, then fighting them again. The painting is screaming—I tone it down. Too bland? Build it back up again. A line that was here is now over there. Shapes that were this, now look like that. I wash it, I scratch it, I scrape it, I tear it, I shred it, I repaint it. Change and tenacity are the heart of my process which works like a pendulum, control and surrender, control and surrender, interspersed with periods of solitary thought, until the sway gets smaller and smaller as the conflict is resolved.

This struggle is lifeblood to me. I don't just love to paint, I need to. It is my release, my safe harbor.