It’s been quite a while since I’ve exhibited my paintings. At some point along the way I think I lost faith. For most of my adult life I’ve been a very disciplined painter, but I decided I would put it aside for a while. I didn’t feel the same need or drive to make images that I once did. I thought maybe I’d stop painting and never go back to it.

However, my plan to give up painting has been a dismal failure. I was thinking about that the other day, and the old Merle Travis tune, Dark as a Dungeon came to mind: “Like a fiend with his dope, a drunkard his wine, a man will have lust for the lure of the mine.” I think that’s the way it is for me and painting. I can step away for a while, but I always seem to come back to it. So what drives this urge to paint?

Philip Guston said it very well:
“Painting seems like some kind of peculiar miracle that I need to have again and again.”

I think that’s it. When I start a painting, I have all kinds of ideas going on, and sometimes they compete with one another. Usually the strongest ideas I have going in give me the most trouble and they bog me down until I beat them back with an idea stick. Sometimes paintings stay in flux for months and even years. I work on them and work on them and think about them. I leave them out, in my face, or sometimes I hide them away, and there they are, scraps of ideas, images, but that’s all they are. And then everything about them seems perfectly obvious and they come together so fast I can hardly believe it. Somewhere along the way, among all the thoughts and images and doubts and new ideas, among all the images I couldn’t live with, there is this creative leap. I think that’s what Gustin was talking about. That’s the thing I need over and over. At times I look at a painting I’ve made and I think, how the hell did come up with this one?

And so, I’ve been painting, but I haven’t been in any hurry to exhibit. I thought I’d just not worry about exhibiting and instead concentrate on painting. But when Yvonne Whelan asked me if I’d like to show at Yumart, I could immediately imagine my paintings in that space and I agreed right away. Paintings from the Lost Forest opens April 26.