"I am stabilized by the sheer act of painting. An inward calibration. The construction of an image is tantamount to rebirth. Pure labor. Its also a very narrow path.  One pursues it because choice no longer comes into play.  You wander the earth in a kind of splendid exile.  The winter season has been driven by the glorious weather and with that a most sublime light. I have been ensconced in the Huntington Library Desert Garden working a series of 8x10 panels.  The botanical display is overwhelming.  A world convention of cactus!  Its brilliant and to paint in and among the delegates is a humble privilege. The paintings small, as I have found site work more and more difficult. The winter light cuts like a knife and everything becomes a moving sundial. Each little twist and turn of shadow and light is on the run and you engage and disengage at bewildering speed. The evening descends in a violet curtain so suddenly as to leave you speechless. You gather your belongings in the growing chill and stagger for the gate.  Later that night in a warm studio you peer into the splattered paint box and there it lies, already a relic from the past, a shard of broken light, a worn and burnished dance floor smeared with cobalt blues and indigo and bright shinning golds of Indian lake and permanent rose.

The days now begin to lengthen. One turns back on winter as if trying to hold it down, hoping for something more from its inner purse, but it heaves ever so slowly and you must give way and let go to the inevitable persuasion of its rhythm" geles
January 2007