YOU SPEAK ABOUT YOUR LOVE OF AND PREFERENCE FOR BIG OPEN SPACES. HOWEVER, IN MANY OF YOUR PICTURES, YOUR CHARACTERS ARE SHOWN
IN SMALL SPACES, NARROW ROOMS, OR FROM A NARROW FOCUS.
TELL ME ABOUT PROXIMITY.

I have never thought of the interior spaces of the paintings as being particularly claustrophobic. To me, there's comfort in the idea of a monastic cell/prison where your only obligation is to the inside of your head. Maybe that's also the reason for my attraction to wide-open spaces — there's no one else there.

But if I wanted to figure out all the psychological stuff, I'd get a shrink. The process is simple. I start with a picture in my head. It's not the kind of picture that a person thinks up, but the kind that just appears. From then on every decision is based on what looks right.Everything goes where it looks like it ought to go — not where I think it ought to go. Quite often there are happy confluences, where what looks right is also right in other ways, but you can only back the horse into that stall. You can't lead him in headfirst.

While I'm working I try to concentrate on the technical problems — to be just eyes and hands, not theories and opinions. The paintings come out better that way. I don't know why this is, but there is a shelf's worth of failures in my closet to prove it.