I start out making my paintings for me. I don't see it as a form of communication. Until, of course, after they are done and I want people to see them. And want them to be recognized. But while I am making them I just try to get lost in them. Kind of like it's a prayer.

I start out making my paintings for me. I don't see it as a form of communication. Until, of course, after they are done and I want people to see them. And want them to be recognized. But while I am making them I just try to get lost in them. Kind of like it's a prayer.

The paintings usually start as abstracts and then I look at them and look at them, and like a Rorschach test, I try and see what it is.

I have an idea of a set of colors and see what I have. A lot of things, the best, more magical things in the paintings just sort of happen. They aren't things I thought of in advance. They are more things I am given. What paint does, in watercolor more than oil but it happens in oil too, are things one never expects if you work freely. I suppose I learned a lot coming to this after years of playing improvisational music. I have to trust my intuition and I work in the moment, when that moment seems to be happening. And to leave it alone when it is not.

When I was about 17 I knew that I was going to be serious about music. Before that I thought, fairly certainly, that I would be a writer. Before that, I thought I would be a forward in the NBA. And before that I thought that I would own a snake farm.

It seems like there are always gatekeepers. People between you and the people who are moved by your work. They often make a beautiful thing creepy.

I'd always maintained an image so that people wouldn't approach me.