Every painting is a conversation, or a room full of conversations buzzing around one another. My paintings come from a deep wordless place, where groups of strong and subtle emotions explain themselves through layers of color, where memories and experiences vie for their moment to be recollected on my panels. Sometimes I conjure up the stored images that I wish to interpret through the blending and smearing of paint, but more often, the deep emotions and memories will push to the surface of their own accord, and I marvel to witness their stories told through my hands. I literally paint with my hands, because even the short length of a paintbrush keeps me too far away from the close contact that these intensely personal stories demand. As the abstract emotional color-content begins to take shape, I then use various utensils to scrape lines, or hard chunks of pigment to define some of the emerging images that I see. Sometimes I am surprised to find that I’ve painted the whole thing upside-down, or that there are four different paintings, depending on which direction I hold the panel. In one direction, certain colors shout and others whisper; in another direction, the colors switch roles, or another emotion speaks up louder than the others.