"What's your favorite part of what
you do?"
"My biggest joy as an artist is
when the painting surface seems to disappear and I feel I'm living
inside the scene I'm painting. There's a Latin quote that I have
carved onto my mahlstick. It says: "Ars est celare artem,"
which means "true art is the concealment of artifice."
In other words, it's easy to make a
painting look like paint, but it's much harder to make a painting
that involves a viewer so completely that he feels the heat of sun on
his neck and the sand in his shoes. I wish this effect happened more
often in my own work. It never happens without a lot of sweat and
struggle. I don't take all the necessary steps often enough, because
I've got a lazy streak like everybody. But when I do, I'm glad, and
it's well worth it the trouble."
