"I used to think there were no secrets. But I started going out by creeks and lakes and woods and up on hills to paint. Once I set up my easel by a little pond and after working awhile, a muskrat came out to swim around. I didn't paint him. I now have two paintings of the pond, but the muskrat isn't in either. That's a secret. The pond belongs to the muskrat. I'm not sure what I have on the canvases."

"In painting, drawing, image-making, there is always that sense of something eluding the attempt to- not capture- but find. Something, or some way of doing something is just about revealed. Always a promise of getting it next time- or getting closer to a way of rendering that will be like pealing away an obscuring film."