For me, painting is an act of engaging deeply with life. I move fluidly between abstraction and representation, depending on the challenge I’ve chosen to set for myself. While I am doing it or thinking about it or dreaming of it, I am making sense of the world. I am excavating feelings and knowledge; I’m talking with myself and hearing opinions that sometimes I didn’t know existed before; I am inventing new things. I explore music, color, rhythm, poetry, even math. I become more sensitive and compassionate. I grow in ways that take me beyond the borders of my expectations. I tend to make big paintings, because I am interested in being immersed in the experience, using my body to build a space to enter any time I want. But I also make smaller work. I’m delighted by how easily I can change the scale. There is a sense of deep intimacy that comes from downshifting. It’s almost like knitting or crocheting or sewing, or even writing in a journal. It’s a quiet moment of meditation.