After my opening at the Soprafina Gallery in Boston several years ago, friends invited me to dinner with an oncologist* and his wife. Over the meal, he told me about his research. He had access to mountains of data collected from patients over many years, and he and his team were struggling to mine it for patterns that might predict cancer. This was before artificial intelligence could handle such a task. He had resorted to color-coding the data. I told him he was heading for trouble.

Hilma af Klint and Wassily Kandinsky, two influential artists of the early 20th century, shared a profound interest in the spiritual and abstract realms of art. While their paths diverged in many ways, their work was deeply intertwined by their explorations of spirituality, physics, and music.

In 2018, I developed bilateral trigger thumbs, which meant I could not tie my shoes, write my name, or hold a brush, much less paint. I wanted to keep painting while contemplating the possibility of surgery, but with both hands in metal braces, I had to devise a new way to work.

Over the last year I have had several versions of an exhibition that I call, Continuous Flow. The first in Boston at Soprafina Gallery, the second and largest at SUNY Oneonta, and in April, a third at Gremillion and Company, Fine Art, Inc. in Houston, Texas.

These shows came at an interesting time for me. In 2017, as I was preparing for these exhibitions, I lost use of my hands for six months. I had double trigger thumbs, which meant I could not bend my thumbs, write my name, or hold a brush. What to do? I kept working.

One day I was moving paintings in the "gallery space" of my studio  and I heard the words, "French Revolution". We had just been through a long spate of Trump tantrums and I believe it was that, as much as anything, that brought the French Revolution to mind. I love French history, and while I haven't studied the Revolution in many years, I spent the afternoon in a revery of free association. I was working on some large paintings that are mostly abstract, but with a representational association. And I was using a lot of metallic paint. I decided that I wanted to paint one of those wide, diaphanous skirts worn by Marie-Antoinette

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.

My paintings are about  light.

When I paint representationally and I am about the business of rendering light, I often choose a subject that is backlit. It seems to offer the most extensive and complex qualities of light - light on a surface, passing through a surface, reflecting off of a surface, often highlighting transparency, translucency, reflection, or glitter.