For my last appearance in New American Paintings I wrote that my work then marked,"...a return to fairly overt political content as a response to what is arguably the worst American presidency in history." That was four years ago. And while my love for the world is now, if anything, deeper, I'm still drawing part of my inspiration to paint from a deep loathing of the sniveling, lying bastards that are destroying our country.

While nothing motivates quite like hate, it does tend to burn you out after a while. Hope and humor are more sustainable resources from which the well adjusted painter can mine inspiration.

So the recent work marks a return, this time, to a more hopeful and humorous impromptu or improvisational mode of painting I practiced many years ago when I was first teaching myself to paint. Starting on a blank canvas with no preliminary sketches and limited visual reference is a stunningly inefficient way to work, but it has it's advantages. It's painting as thought, rather than the illustration of idea. This time around, the process creates the opportunities to practice the acquired discipline of rendering believable light, space and anatomy, while taking advantage of improvised and unforeseen painting structures, content and imagery in the service of the visual manifestation of belief.