i first felt this when i was 9 or 10 when my dad took me up north / 3 am n we are slowing putt putting down a narrow stream to a lake somewhere ahead / dark branches criss crossing the sky above us with bats darting after take out in all the open spaces / i felt this sense, directly / immediately that the north neither cared if or that we came there or not / stayed or not / died or not / it would continue to be with or without us / feeling that becoming one with everything around me opening up feelings of being within an ordered chaos, embracing a randomness of freedom allowing me to lose myself n reach out and touch infinity; (the city and everything in it are precisely what blocks this experience from being possible in the city) my paintings are bits n pieces of this totality i lose myself in / individual experiences / explorations of ideas both connecting me to the universe n allowing me to lose myself within it;