"To paint the Oratorio Church door one must arrive at it's substance. Five times it went up, five times scraped back to the ghost beneath. It is not enough to paint a picture. There is more to it. Human flesh in spirit, observing and absorbing with all the senses, this is the real story. How to record the reality of this? You have to breath in a painting through your hands and eyes. There is an alchemy in play. It is not easy to try and paint beyond the eyes, a certain blindness occurs. We have our limitations. Painting rides on a fine margin. Like hurtling down a mountain on skis at high speed, there is a fine line between lucidity and chaos. What you see and know can vanish in a twinkling of an eye and reappear only to slip away again. Formulas won't help you. They will procure for you a picture however but "painting" is something else. It is a testimony of a soul in search of balance. There are moments when the calibration of these things brings forth a living art but truly they are rare."