“The way paint gets onto the canvas… attack… advance… softly… intensely brave… capable of being reworked.. scraped off and put back… but mostly with intention, force (light or heavy), fearlessly, serenely, but NOT tentative and weak… Or so thin that it’s barely there…“

“We have to go back… It is your nervous system that you need to connect to, your touch, your aggression that so many of us don’t allow ourselves. It isn’t easy to make gentle work that is strong… all the forms depend on each other…There is a way to be in the moment, conscious, where every mark does something…“

“One of the tests of a good painting is ‘how long can you look at it?’, Hang your work on the wall…if you get tired of seeing it after a few weeks or notice you never look at it…Well?“

“What makes the art we love so possible to never get tired of… has to do with the state of the artists’ mind as the work was being made … the kind of connections that were happening between the eye, the hand and the mind.“

“Why are mistakes so scary? Why does getting it ‘right’ mean only how it looks and not how it feels? What happens when it feels great but looks a mess? What do you have to do to make the paint alive and as necessary as the picture you are trying to copy? How do you make the means and the subject to be equal to each other?“

“When it works is it Magic?”

“How can you stand it when it is strongly painted but ugly?”

NMM