I WAS WONDERING HOW YOU COME UP WITH IDEAS FOR YOUR PAINTINGS.

There is an experience that I have on certain occasions when I am able to access a "place" which all my life I've referred to as "behind the veil." On some days there is a little hole or rip in the "veil" and pictures, words, and ideas from "behind" are able to float through to my side, where I can grab them and try to hold on to them. That is the place where I come up with the ideas for my paintings. Usually it happens when I'm in the bathtub or long-distance driving, but on really good days the pictures just keep coming one after another no matter what I'm doing.

Then they don't come again for a while, but I keep them stored up on bits and pieces of paper to last out the dry spell. One time, years ago, the rip disappeared for several months, long enough that I had given up on it and thought it was gone forever. When it returned I knew instantly that it was back at least a day before any pictures actually came out of it. There is a surprising physicality to the rip itself and its presence or absence is something I can look around for and find or not find inside myself, just as though it were a real thing—like you would look around a room to try and find the cat. I can encourage it to stay or drive it away by how I conduct my life, but in the end, also like a cat, I really have no control over it at all. My sense of that "place" where I get my ideas is that it is outside of and separate from my personality or intellect.