In my work, I try above everything, above anything, to be honest. This is kind of terrifying.

I try and make work that moves me, because I want so desperately to move others. I ache to share, to know - it touched me, can it touch you too? Are we alike? In this, if in nothing else? The works that I admire most have a kind of… courage to them.

To paint them would have taken, well - balls.

And, for me anyway, it is always the human form that calls to me thus, in love gasped or grief breaking. We are all beautiful, the ugliest of us become tragedy, and form beauty by its physical absence.

It is for these reasons that humanity itself has become the subject of my attempts.

I am trying to be brave enough to find a kind of magical promise - A sketched line of tension in a raised palm of farewell... (almost alive, so close to alive, over-full; a story but still;)

A sharp thrill of sudden recognition, the arc of a cheek lips just parted, bitten fingers white strained, pink tongue barely visible pressed against small white teeth. Perfect knowing eyes imploring our own

- and for a moment we share the image creature's lust, her bliss, his agony. After so long and so much and so long and so very much that has hurt me as each of us must hurt: with this paint I will try to tell you, I will try and find the courage to share with you. And perhaps you will see, and know, because of the deep scars that you wear upon your heart.

I am fiercely proud of my skills to paint and draw and they are tools that I have earned. Something that I love hard. I think, I hope that they matter. That part of what gives meaning to art is how hard-won the artwork is, how much it has cost for it to be forced into existence. So I try, and I use them. Like nails, like teeth. I will never, and can never stop.

This has become, I admit, bloody-minded stubbornness. I think that that's ok, really… yeah. It is. I will try to make beautiful things. I will try and make meaning. I must live with all that I have because living is all that I have.

It is wonderful! An ocean of choices that can be made beautiful by choosing well. Our time is ours.

I hope so hard that somewhere in this swarming, seething world of humankind I will I may I might share this wonder within me. That we exist at all. The stunning miracle of chance that we are. How vehemently, how intensely happy I am that I ever occurred.