So easy to get lost amid each and every brush stroke. Adding new color or shape to what stands before promotes a tension-there is a balance here (even if that balance is a white, untouched canvas)-you gonna upset it or continue to walk a thin line, retaining the symmetry but keeping the rest moving. Almost impossible to move backwards to regain a feeling, once you lose the gesture of freshness. Erasure is a friend to me in my other work-not so here. As with infidelity, there is very little real forgiveness.

The successes or failures here make for either a loud triumph or a whimpering, pitiful withdrawal. The continual tension produces real fatigue, hard to wish away or drown with caffeine. It is easy to work on several paintings at once, switching over to temporarily change the subject-but there is always an insistence on returning: postponed doubts or ineffectual solutions haunt this painter. For better or worse, "sleeping on it" is rarely satisfactory-for me, it seems less painful to just white the canvas out and completely "destroy" the problem.

Spose it's obvious, but I'll say it anyway. This work with brush and paint is so very different from my work as a sculptor.

As I mentioned before, I started making these heads in December, using the wood from a fallen willow tree as a base to nail into.