My History of Black Series refers to darkness in mood and memory. However black is also rich, luscious, dense and beautiful. These paintings are emotional in nature, dealing with a visceral response as well. I respond to what I make and what I see while I am doing it. Using a texture or an image over an image to force a visual, painterly response, I can’t predict what I will make. I am involved in a painterly dialogue. These paintings refer to others I have made and memories of making particular images in particular figure paintings that are psychological. Physical in relation to the body, tactile and seductive, I strive for a hallucinatory quality as well as an aggressiveness in the paint handling. Imagery is held together by texture, form and gesture and sometimes has a decorative quality, and often with a felt human presence. The textural quality is what engages me and preference for black and white nonobjective imagery is a way I have limited my options, creating limitations because there is no road map.