Various facets of life become vehicles for liberating the soul.

When I was 5 years old, I began travelling each summer with my parents and sister to South Bend, Indiana, which provided the stimulus of visual ecstasy. This was the beginning of early sensory experiences that immersed themselves deep into the unconscious. It provided seeds for the conscious later on (way later on). Eventually, they blossomed and became art.

On the train, the dining car was beyond just an eating event. It was compounded with the fulfillment of looking out the window of our "drawing room" and soaking in the countryside and the backyards of small towns and communities. For my tiny, tender eye, these were paintings framed by a large window. My first museum.

During the same early period, we lived in a hotel for 6 months. Across from the "Biltmore" in Atlanta, Georgia was the "Majestic." It was an eatery with a counter, but not a diner in the traditional, pure, bonafide sense. It had short stools and I was enthralled sitting on those stools with all the grown-ups. I was even more thrilled by observing with complete and clear amazement the choreography of the counter-man preparing food so swiftly on the grill, right in front of me. I couldn't tear my eyes away from his twists and turns of the wrist, flipping burgers and flopping toast; the opening and closing of the polished metal doors; and of course the magical one-hand-egg-breaking routine. I loved it all. It was entertainment in a spiritual area I knew nothing about, and more visual joy for the little boy and his beginning sensibilities. Later on, (way later on), these stimuli would be redefined and redistributed on canvas.

I am concerned with process: the revelation of a particular and poignant part of the urban landscape, and thus the preservation of a unique and rapidly disappearing icon of American roadside culture. (Take from culture in one dimension and contribute back in another dimension.) A significant aspect of the process is the quest, which basically is the transformation of documented archaeological findings - travel, investigation, gathering of material. Painting is the mere act of transcendence; an end product that enters space and time; the final leg of the quest.