I don’t remember ever having drawn on canvas except in Graduate School at CalArts. John Baldessari happened to come into my studio and see a drawing on canvas that I had just finished. He said that he loved it.

This statement coming from someone who fought to keep me out of Graduate School. Paul Brach, then the Dean of the School of Art, fought to let me in. Paul never told me the reason that JB wanted to stop me.

My MFA experience was a mind-opener. My mentor was Gerald Ferguson. He taught me more about the repeated image than I ever learned from anyone else. It was due to Jerry’s influence that I began to draw rows of lines; I chose 50 as the limit I would draw at any one time. Lines also became for me the ultimate objective, reductive expression of an exquisite meaninglessness.

After Jerry left CalArts, I assigned meaning to the lines. They became associated with my body and how my body related to the contour of the mountains I could see out my studio window. I needed to feel as though I was connected with something or someone. The lines became subjective.

It is so interesting that I could never understand the way that change occurred. I can say that the lines “developed” from one kind into another because I lost my friend, Jerry. I missed the person I could embrace both in mind and body.

I am still repeating lines, but they have become shapes and are a part of stencils, which replicate the outlines of original drawings I have done whose imagery is worth saving. I can see imagery/marks objectively again. I have intended that the imagery since 2018 reflect my environment, i.e. trees, rivers, flowers, twigs, for the reason that my relationship to the natural world seems to be close, even though it is disappearing too.

Everything I do is a part of how I feel, how I think, how I know. The doing is a conversation with the materials I am using. It is unnecessary to discuss the work. The work always speaks for itself—that is something Jerry taught me.