Painting, for me, is a process of creating problems for myself and then solving them. The form and composition are right but not the colors; the configuration is interesting but doesn’t work at this scale; the colors are fine in themselves but not at their current saturation, and so on. Often, solving one problem creates two or three more, so that a day in the studio is all about making decisions that force more decisions as the painting progresses and the stakes are raised. From start to finish, the process can take weeks, months, or longer. Only when there are no more decisions to be made is the painting finished.
Perhaps because I was raised in the American Southwest, with its wide open spaces and stark mineral colors, I began as a painter with an inclination toward Minimalism and simple geometric forms. The forms were usually pared-down and hard-edged. More recently, I have been softening some of the edges, relaxing some of the forms, looking for ways to achieve the fullest expressive potential from relatively simple formats. I begin most paintings with an overall conception, often sketched out on paper, and see how far that takes me. It’s important to leave room for chance, accident, contingency, and revision. Part of why the painting process is such a never-ending challenge for me is that planning goes only so far, and control is never complete (nor would I want it to be).
The possibilities and qualities of the materials I work with fascinate me, and I try to keep an open mind about them. In making acrylic paintings, I will use whatever the mark-making process requires – brush, palette knife, sponge, rag, comb, fingers, masking tape. My paintings often unfold in series, with scale changes, color variations, and shifts from panel support to canvas or from brush to palette knife. Whenever new work is built literally on top of old, I welcome the ghost-like lines and shapes still visible from previous layers. These are the tangible evidence of time’s passage -- a reminder that paintings are about both space and time.