I believe I am constitutionally incapable of making abstract paintings. My latest painting proves this, it is meant to be abstract, but it is not! I cannot not tell a story! I am aware that abstract work is oftentimes storyful or story-driven, I do not say that abstract painting is necessarily void of story, I am only saying that my attempts at abstract work always become figurative somehow, my eye and hands insist on it, they serve a different master (mistress?) than my intellect and my "intentions." You would think by all the things I say about this struggle and about the enterprise of painting that the sun I revolve around is Story, and that I am a worker storyteller ant serving my queen, who is Storyteller Regina. Well, maybe it is, and maybe I am! But that is not why I go to the easel everyday! Painting propels itself, it does not need a reason to do so, it does not require a thesis that painting must then prove. The reason to paint is to get paint onto canvas and to arrange it (eventually) in such a way that not only does it makes sense to the viewer, but that it makes the only sense, if that makes sense. So I am not laboring under the impression that my paintings must tell stories, I would survive them not doing so. In fact, I would love to make a painting that didn't tell a story, that was absolutely and purely a visual experience, bypassing, as music does, the intellect entirely. A painting without a narrative, but with emotional force nonetheless. I would love to do that! But I do not seem to be able to. Even what I consider to be my few successful abstract paintings are not that at all, they are entirely figurative! That is enough for today, I have covered all of this before. I am only riding this particular go-cart because yesterday's abstract painting, with its central object, is no more abstract than the letters of these words.