Being an "artist" for me means the act of making an object
by hand which is a visual phenomenon, something understood
by vision alone. It's a hard idea for most people to acknowledge, because
most people in our contemporary society are used to stories
and explanations.

Painting and sculpture are the arts that make what we refer
to as "beauty." Beauty is something that is visual and is
made by way of human intelligence. Beauty, in truth, is not
found in nature. What most people think of as beauty, such
as a stunning, and sexually desirable woman, is in truth
basic animal instinctual stimulation; but she does not
expose what the term "beauty" really connotes, unless she is
the subject of a painting which is itself "beautiful." In
painting, beauty "is in the eye of the beholder" because it
is beyond words, beyond explanations, and can only be
understood through the intelligence of a person's vision.
Art is for anybody, but not for everybody.

"Intellectual art," or " conceptual art," are trends that
miss the point. Making visual "art" is not about a verbal dialogue,
or literal story. It is neither about making sarcastic statements for people
to talk about. It is neither about making things that nobody
has ever seen before. Making "art" is about a coordination
between a person's eyes and hands that transmits something
from deep within a person that is universally
comprehendible, because it is human, and because it is of
universal intelligence itself. The subject that an artist chooses to
use is only the means to the end. It doesn't matter whether
the subject of a painting is somebody's portrait, or a
nonrepresentational "theme." The point is what the artist is
able to do with the subject she or he uses; it's how well
that person can paint it, but it's not what the person
paints.

Painting, for me, has become a matter of spontaneity that
leads to visual “perfection.” Everything in the painting is
there because it's supposed to be there. It all fits
together exactly the way it's supposed to, and which is
evidenced by looking at the painting itself.
Nothing in it is out of place, nothing detracts from it's
overall "beauty" that just makes sense to whoever is looking
at it. In the beginning, I struggled continually with where to put
things into a painting. I couldn't actually paint as long as
I kept trying to paint. The day came when I stopped trying
to paint, and that's the day I actually started painting.