So-called restoration is at least as tricky as brain surgery. Most pictures expire under scalpel and sponge.

I have but one life to give to adventure.

Painting dissolves the forms at its command ... it melts them into color.

Personal answers to ultimate questions. That is what we seek.

This moment, this being, is the thing. My life is all life in little. The moon, the planets, pass around my heart. The sun, now hidden by the round bulk of this earth, shines into me, and in me as well. The gods and the angels both good and bad are like the hairs of my own head, seemingly numberless, and growing from within. I people the cosmos from myself, it seems, yet what am I? A puff of dust, or a brief coughing spell, with emptiness and silence to follow.

We're not home-and-hearth people. We're the adventurers, the buccaneers, the blockade runners. Without challenge, we're only alive.

So-called restoration is at least as tricky as brain surgery. Most pictures expire under scalpel and sponge.