"Hey, that's neat," followed by, "It looks fun to paint." I'd like to say otherwise, but that's how my paintings begin. Sometimes, if i'm lucky, I'll have a specific idea of where to take a work. But more often than not, I'll just draw and paint from a random personal photo and see where it goes. If there is any meaning to be had in my work, it is in the fact that at no time do I turn off the part of me that turned me on to the image in the first place. In other words, as I paint, hundreds of little "Hey, that's neat" moments occur within the painting. It might be some shape in the initial drawing, or some arbitrary wash of color-anything that stands alone and somehow asserts its right to exist. Although I gravitate towards figuration, or at least animate objects, there is a point where the inanimate things on the canvas seem to come to life and take over. I guess I don't have a problem with that, so long as all the little "neat" moments eventually combine to become something more.