Lately my paintings are things that are cultivated. They begin as faint images. I layer little by little with no concern for time. They begin to cake with layers. Each layer speaks with the space surrounding it and what lies beneath it. How each layer interacts is usually discovered much later then when it is first applied. At the surface this process seems to say that each layer is random, and I take credit in place for the randomness that creates it. I do not see this as such.

The randomness that I am possible to create is separate from the randomness anyone else is able to produce. So even if one reduces my paintings to randomness, it is at least my personal randomness and not anyone else's.

Part of the process is the passing of time. I tend to set a painting away with enough time to forget it to the point that it becomes fresh. At this point the painting process is more like me interacting with the painting. It is not so much a painting I have created. It is more like running into a stranger. Yet it does bear the mark of myself that I cannot erase clean with time. But with time, I as a person have changed. I have had more experiences and I am not the same thing. It is like talking to my past self in a way that is possible.

Then I, as do many painters, come to an impasse about when to stop painting. If I view the paintings I make to conversations to my past selves, how do I end the conversation? This conversation is also nothing of the content of a normal conversation between two people. People rarely carry a pad of paper with a pencil and give to a friend that scribbles with you back and forth. This is the conversation I am having with my past. It is a conversation that is easy to start but hard to end. I guess I would have to figure it to be a collaboration of past selves to an image. Each one has a say in what it should look like. The end comes not as a handshake good bye but as a democratic electorate ending a vote. The end comes when there runs out of people.

A democracy does not elect perfection but a majority what the electorate thinks is right. Each time I paint I do not creating know that what I do is perfect. I do what I do because I think it is what is right for the painting.

But the voters currently cannot articulate what the other voters think. I am not saying that the voters do not react to the each other, but I would say they do this with out awareness. Voters do not go out of their way to influence the thoughts of other voters. They simply put down what they think and that is that. I am uncertain whether this will be a permanent feature.