On Painting: "Realism" in painting, at this stage in history is practically meaningless. All paintings are realistic. Any references, however finely depicted, to objects, persons and places are completely incidental to the act of painting, and in my opinion, to the result of that act. As much as a painting may resemble a photograph, or be derived from photographic sources or informed by photographic references, it cannot be a photograph. Painting represents the distillation of emotional responses to the artist's experience of the universe both within and without. It is a physical act of love and of ambition, at once kinesthetic and spiritual.
 
I have not ever been able to separate the "abstract" from the "realistic", nor does subject matter mean anything more than just that: "subject matter". There is no difference to me between painting a delphinium or a rusted crankshaft. They have edges, surfaces, texture, volume, color. My problems have to do with feeling how these things occupy space, both physical and psychic space; how their edges drop off into the background and the significance of that background; do they reflect light and how; how much light comes from within. The subject matter in an abstract painting is, of course, usually unnameable. But the same considerations apply.
 
I often enjoy the abstract qualities of so-called realistic painting and the illusionistic moments in work that is intended to be abstract. But I have never been one to look up and see images in the clouds; to me they are just clouds. What I look for is the calligraphy in the brushwork. Ultimately it boils down to my love for the gesture made by a human hand.