I have always had imagery in my work even when I painted architecture -- aspects of building facades -- when I first came to New York in 1972. I wanted to connect my decision to paint with my own experience and acknowledge a sense of my place. From this beginning, I chose not to paint something purely abstract so that my paintings could remain open to my imagination, to my unconcious and to dimensions that are unknown.

What continues to this day in my painting is the need to refer to my own experience through a vocabulary of recognizable, simplified, abstracted images. And the source for the growth and change in my art comes from the way in which the process of painting, unlike spoken language, is open to the unconscious. This is because the relationship to the unconscious is less defended in painting. Words are limited in terms of expressing feelings and this is especially so when the experience is unfamiliar. When I speak, I choose words and censor myself -- I am inhibited, whereas in painting, the feelings come pouring out.

I have a representational impulse in my work, and one can also see this in the gestural actions of Pollock. However, it is obvious that I am not involved in Expressionism in the sense of conveying the intensity of lived or perceived experience. The experience that I try to convey has to do with the internal process of my identity and my struggles to be a painter, and the sense of doing it alone.

One of the ways that the representational impulse comes out is through the shapes or images that I use. They are not based on any literal description of an object, rather they are simplified depictions. For example, a vessel is abstracted and has the form of a quarter-circle. Sometimes I use two vessels which is the statement of a relationship. Another frame like device functions like a portico and marks the passage to the statement of the relationship. The form of the vessel can also be the representation of an idea -- in this case the idea of a receptacle. This idea is relevant both to me and to the way that a painting functions. Paintings are receptacles which carry emotions and ideas which communicate the aesthetic experience.

The representational impulse also comes out through the linear traceries. They are my personal language. I own them. I have been given this way of expression and it is the pictorial extension of an inner discourse which is not only with myself but also a reflection of conversations with others.

I have drips. They dissolve edges and break down shapes and structures. My painting medium is a clear emulsion and it transforms the rawness and materiality of the canvas. This is my way of going beyond a traditional way of working. The square, which is an understructure of my painting, impacts on the way my work is installed in the gallery. I like to hang my drawings like structural units in a grid. These grids function like open squares and echo the scale of the larger paintings. Sets of smaller paintings are installed in a linear progression to emphasize the continuity from one painting to the next.

Now that color is reduced to black and white, I can explore other emotions than if I had used color. By painting in subleties of black and grey, all the elements including the linear traceries, the shapes and the understructure continue in the work in a more integrated fashion.