Although I love to paint realistically, sometimes I get tired of representationalism; it gets too much in the face. These are times when I want to have nothing to do with reality, neither pure nor reinterpreted, and want to deal only with the pure elements in art: the power of color, the strength of the value, the directional impetus of a line, the mystery of the unrecognizable form, the depth and the richness of texture.... This is when I want to challenge myself, want to create something new, my very own visual language—something every viewer can see differently, react to differently, interpret differently.