Painting

“I go by feeling and don't seek perfect form,” wrote the Japanese poet Ishikawa Jozan (1583-1672). And I go by feeling and not form when I paint – and in every act of creativity.

Everything is an instance of God – of Spirit manifest on earth.

"Does this artist have a soul?," you ask.

The ancient Chinese painters believed that one's will is at the tip of the brush.

I have been looking for a word to use for all my pictorial endeavors: painting, photography, and the placing – or throwing – of objects to then be photographed. I cannot find one in English. So I am led to the Chinese shih hua.

For his departing student, the Buddhist Master painted a perfect circle.

The purpose of Art should not be to shock, to confuse – but to reassure.

Every day I write whatever comes to me to write about. And I love doing it. But if I am asked to write about a particular topic – even one I know well, and may of my own volition have written about previously, I don't enjoy the writing experience nearly as much.

For me, a major – perhaps the major – criterion of any work of art is whether the viewer believes not that the artist has painted it, but that it has been painted through him.

There are three levels to a work of art, to a photograph.