PHILOSOPHY	ARTIST-VIEWER RELATIONSHIP
I paint because I was a bad person in another life, so God made me an artist to torment me. Actually, it's a perfectly natural thing for me to do. The work, the thought process, the physical energy it takes, it's all one big meditation for me. Painting is the only thing I do that makes me feel consistently better. I think it was best said when someone described the creative process as being in the "FLOW" of life. That’s what happens when a person loses all sense of time and space. Like when we were little kids playing with our friends on a beautiful day, the day seemed to go twice as fast. That's how I feel when I'm painting, that's why I have to paint. I would like to relay a small but interesting event in my painting life. I was invited to show a series of the “Toy” paintings at a local restaurant not far from my studio. Always anxious to show my work, I put the paintings up as soon as I could. They looked great on the bare brick wall. Something about large color fields changed the space for the better.	A few weeks later I went back to see how things were going and to have some dinner. It was getting late and as I was finishing up my meal I asked the waitress, who did not know me; "so what do you think of these paintings?" She looked at me closely to see if the question was loaded (of course it was), to this she replied, "I don't know... what do you think?" At this point I knew she had no idea who I was and that they were mine, so I decided to go with the negative review. With a disgusted look on my face I said "I think these paintings are terrible, the color, the size, the subject... I mean, to put these in here is strange." Now this is the critical moment in the conversation where she felt safe admitting the pure and honest truth. This is also the point that I most admire when listening to people communicate their reaction to artwork. As I watched her expression change from ambivalence to one of relief she laughed out loud and said, " I think these are the worst paintings I've ever seen. I couldn't agree with you more, I mean I want to bring down my three year olds' sketches and hang those up," she explained.	I sat and agreed with her for at least twenty minutes as she went off about her disdain for the work.I have to say that it was such a great conversation. I'll never forget it. My paintings actually moved a person so much that they were feeling hate for me and my work. Wow, it's really exciting to effect viewers in some way. Hopefully my reviews won't be all bad. But the important point for me is that viewers of my paintings have opinions. I am very afraid of the "deadly middle". I think you can do great work that everyone loves and remembers or really bad work that is so upsetting that the viewer also remembers. But the middle, the ugly middle, that is where most artists are. It's like the vast desert, nothing going on, nobody knows of you or cares. I'm sure that waitress will remember those toy paintings because she hated them so much. The people I move in the other direction, those that buy and enjoy my paintings, is what is extremely rewarding to me.