Art: "the quality or expression according to aesthetic principles, of what is beautiful, appealing, or of more than ordinary significance." I am drawn to those final five words - of more than ordinary significance. The thought comforts and supports me. It gets me up in the morning, propels me to the studio, works me in a perpetual loop of painting, repainting, drawing, erasing, rearranging. More than persistence it is faith - the sum of things hoped for, things sensed, but not seen. I have devoted decades of time, feelings, money, hope and belief. I am compelled; nothing else will do. This creative life is a career, but also a life journey, and is therefore often amorphous, without clear goals or paths to achievement. For how does one achieve that which is "of more than ordinary significance?" In the end, it is more about attempting than attaining: attempting to confront the old realities of myself, and then - through "hard payment" - rearrange and reconfigure myself with the two-dimensional surface of the work. Push hard enough, long enough, and we - both the work and I - turn, slip, morph into a place of resolution. A moment. The confusion, the unknowing, the tension have been exhausted; darkness is made visible. My internal self, the outside world, and the work - the art - are at last united. There is salvation in these moments or reluctant birth, where love is married to color and line. Through this inner revolution I can transcend the ordinary, predictable, satisfied self and use chaos to discover - however briefly - an opening, an adventure, a genuine, compelling thing that is far more than ordinary. A thing of significance, of truth.