Artist's Statement

For 40 years I lived inside language. As a journalist, essayist, and author, I learned that the

deepest work is never in the words themselves — it’s what’s beneath them—like woodgrain

smothered below layers of paint. That’s how I saw it, and perhaps because I wanted to paint. But

early on I understood that I couldn’t chase two obsessions at full speed. I made a necessary

choice because writing could feed me. I gave it everything I had. Newspapers, magazines, books,

screenplays.

Now I paint.

Everything writing taught me— the discipline, beginning without knowing where you’re going,

the tolerance for failure, the long patience required before something true appears—turns out to

have been preparation for visual art. Abstraction is what I trust. An image landing in the body

before it reaches the brain, and nothing is as it seems. I spent decades finding words for what

couldn’t quite be said. Now I don’t have to find the words at all.