The Over Underworld series features high horizons and chaotic, rich undergrowth. You can climb up and down the layers of it, and the black ink spatters underneath sometimes look like animal forms. The top has modern, intereference paint; the top invokes architecture, the conscious mind, technology and civilization. It’s shiny and bright, while the underpart is rough.

The concept behind each art piece is as vital to me as the finished work… often more vital. Abstract work has its own demands because it is unmoored from the anchor of representation and floating out at sea.

Students ask me, “How do I know it’s finished?” I think my true answer is that it’s finished when your dialogue or conversation with the painting is somehow complete. This is true whether or not the painting is a “success” at the moment. Ask your questions not ABOUT the painting, but TO it. If you can know it as complete, whole, and satisfying, your viewer will as well. Knowing an abstract painting is finished is also an abstract idea!

I believe we shouldn’t dwell too much on the underworld, the unconscious, the uncivilized. We don’t need to invite it. It will always come to us unbidden, as these paintings did to me.