Painting to me is constant searching. I can see what I want, but I can't get there, and yet you have to be open enough that if it goes another way, then let it go that way.
Painting is as difficult as brain surgery. It's not that relaxing. But that's the discipline.
Everything I paint is a portrait, whatever the subject.
Painting to me is addictive. These are moments when it is inspiring, but they are few and far between. I keep my tools sharpened for the moment when things do start clicking, but that doesn't happen a lot. I really have to push myself sometimes. Painting is a profession in which it is very easy to be lazy, particularly if you have any degree of success.
When I paint a portrait I want to know more than just the looks of the person. I want to know how they live and what their feelings are... It then becomes more than just physiognomy, but the feel of the person.
Interesting is when one can produce a picture that is pretty, but with undercurrents. The metaphor that comes to mind is in the poems of Robert Frost.
I'm an odd portrait painter in that I'm not just interested in human faces. I consider almost all of my paintings to be portraits.
When painting portraits a lot of people say, 'Why not get a photograph of the person?' Photography is wonderful and it is an art form in itself, but... my portrait is a culmination of elements... a truer image of a person than just the 'click' of a snapshot.
My interest in painting is recording things. I think of myself as almost a documentary filmmaker... I've gotten into some curious situations.
The danger, I find, is that you can become too formulaic, like some commissioned portrait painters who develop a methodology.
