In 1998, following a secret, urgent, 72 hour burst in the studio, I found myself painting like an Abstract Expressionist. Though still in Art School, this was a radical departure for me. It was both thrilling and frightening to abandon all the devices I had hitherto employed when painting.

I did not realize it at the time, but I was privately rebelling against the constraints of meaning and the intricately layered and meticulous way I had been painting. Likewise it was a rebellion against the heavy rhetoric and theory which was thick in the air at the time.

Each of these paintings starts with a hidden desire, upon which I place a set of parameters. The desire is usually a visual color craving and the parameters usually have to do with shape or palette, layering or erosion. Thusly the painting becomes purely about itself. I have no preconceived notion of what will emerge. It becomes a collaborative struggle between the painting and me, until the many small moments or intersections are resolved into an overall aesthetic. It is liberating to be free of the inherent associations of any specific image. The borders and constraints of meaning are loosened, and non verbal language takes over.

In keeping with the Historical tradition of Abstract Expressionism, the content revealed through this type of expression is nuanced, a barometer of both my inner and outer environment.