If I were an abstract painter by nature, I would most likely be struggling to paint the figure in these months in which I have been struggling to suppress the figure, struggling and failing, I am at some kind of unfortunate war with the figure, I say unfortunate because that is what I do, I am a figurative painter, yet I have come to be repelled by the figure, I do not know why! It has been a source of renewal in these past months, taking the figure out of my work, although I never took the figure out, I was still painting figure and ground, although in this case it was more like form and ground, or lack of figure and ground, but it was still figure and ground, stage, essentially, stage and space, or space and space, but that is still figure and ground. It was renewal, whatever it was, and I enjoyed painting again. But that time seems to have passed, and the figure has reemerged, and I will tell you that yesterday, I did not even pretend not to be painting a figure (for all along I was painting figures!), and I will tell you also that I hated every minute of it, or almost every minute anyway, although it was not hatred so much as repulsion and although I do not hate the results, it would be impossible to hate the results of a successful figurative painting. It is not that I want to be an abstract painter, I do not, I am happy to be a figurative painter. It is only that I am at war with the figure, and I do not know that it is not impossible to be a figurative painter without any special reliance on the figure or without the figure at all, this is what I am trying to discover, and it may be that I am trying to discover the undiscoverable, and I am no more apt to succeed than a hamster is to reach the edge of the world running mightily inside her wheel.