Trying to get beyond the image while keeping to the image. Mostly this feels like an impossible thing to achieve, yet that's what makes it interesting, the uncertainty of its even being possible, what I am spending time and money and my body on, my shoulder, my hand—my hands!  I am at war with image, with the figure, yet entwined with it because I am in love with it, with the figure, with the story the figure tells, and with an outcome that surprises me and entrances me with its figurative story and capacity to surprise. I am, every day, practically every day it feels as though I am at war with myself, for it is my deepest impulse to tell a story and to use the figure to do so, and I am tearing at myself in my attempts to tear away my reliance on the figure. Why? Why do I do this? Why not just embrace the figure? Oh, but I cannot! For that would be too easy, and easy bores me, easy bores me, I am in love with the great wild violent wingbeat of ambition.