It is important to me to never settle on a defined style. I need the creative freedom to explore regularly. This is an important part of my process—to be able to play with shapes, color, texture, tools, and ways to create unique marks. It is all part of creating a visual language.I find that painting both abstractly and representationally is a symbiotic relationship, such as between a bee and a flower. The bee takes the pollen from the flower to create food. The flower needs the bee to reproduce. Such is with painting: When I’m painting from life with the intent to create a representational piece, my experience with abstract keeps it painterly and spontaneous. On the other hand, when creating an abstract painting, the representational experience provides important elements that create a strong painting, such as shape, value, and balance. I find this to be an ongoing dialogue that is always fascinating. Without the other, one would lose important information.Sometimes, my abstract paintings begin as representational compositions that are then deconstructed to better convey a certain feeling. This is fun because the viewer has the freedom to create his own narrative and experience. At times I allow recognizable elements to remain, but they are recorded in my own “words.”Other times, a painting is entirely intuitive and inspiration is from a memory of a particular place in time. The word intuition is important to me; it’s taken years for me to truly be able to act on my intuition.Intuition: the ability to understand something immediately, without the need for conscious reasoning.My natural response to visual inspiration can be so strong that I paint it without knowing but instead feeling. This is a meditative process that has become more focused over the years.