When I first saw Georgiana Houghton’s spirit drawings, I felt an instant, almost bodily recognition: Oh, she was listening to the same hum. Houghton, a Victorian gentlewoman (1814-1884), claimed that spirit guides—Titian, Correggio, and dead relatives, moved her hand. The result was a web of translucent strands, loops, and knots so intricate that even now they look as if they’ve been plotted by software. No horizon, no figure: just thread-like energy fields curling across the page.

I grew up with this Lalique vase in the entryway to our home. It was one of several pieces that my Grandmother bought in Paris in June of 1929. I know this because my father told me. The time of the purchase seemed significant as it was only a few months before THE CRASH. Later I discovered a receipt, which seems to be about the delivery of several other Lalique items — an ashtray, a box, and a perfume bottle — to her room at Hotel Crillon.

The nature/nurture question has been applied to artists at least as often as it has to athletes. And the verdict is still out. While I am distantly related to Stefan Lochner, a Northern European Gothic painter, his genes did not make an appearance in any of the intervening generations.  As for nurture, there are some things in my background that, while not predictive, at least didn’t halt my development as an artist.

Kyoto is an ancient city in Japan that is home to several important Buddhist monasteries. On a rainy day ,I was walking through the grounds on one such monastery. Cherry blossoms had fallen on the sidewalk and were held in place by the moisture of the rain. I photographed the pattern it created. Then years later as I worked on this painting it reminded me of that moment, and, in fact, of that whole extraordinary day.

I live in a very rural part of New York State surrounded by farms. The landscape influences my work, but not always in the ways you might imagine. I pass this farm on a back road to the next town. I have stopped a few times to photograph it. What I really love is how the corn crib looks in front of the silo. It is a curved grid in front of a curved grid. In this photo it appears quite abstract. I love a subject that is completely real and seems completely abstract.