Connect What is your favorite type of art to create?

I paint mainly in oil paint. There is a viscosity and living plasticity that can't be found in any other paint. Frankly, I've had a love affair with oil paint since I was seventeen years old. The creative process for my is similar to Love. A painting must have a living quality, separate from perceived reality. It is a thing that stands for Life. In every painting there is a secret history of it's making. It holds time and timelessness. It connects us to a sense of the eternal.

Where do you find inspiration?

Art is everywhere. As Martin Heidegger wrote in The Origin of the Work of Art - "The essence of art is poetry. The essence of poetry, in turn, is the founding of truth". This poetic truth is where I find my inspiration. The truth that is in the least of things. The ordinary everyday experiences of life. Art grounds that truth. It expresses the simple yet incredible miracle that we exist at all. I want to paint without preconception, the way life happens, starting each painting from scratch.

What would you do with $25,000?

Twenty five thousand dollars would go a long way to help keep a roof over my head. I have been painting for over fifty years and still have most of that work. My apartment is a treasure trove of work spanning five decades, of which you've seen a small sample. I've lived my entire adult life in New York City and most of these paintings were done here. I have always worked and lived in the same space. I need to be with my work all the time as a point of reference. To work any time, at all hours.