I am not one of those painters who makes an elaborate drawing on the canvas and then just basically colors it in. I have many thoughts on that process, and none of them especially favorable. But people get good results from this sort of approach to painting, I do not deny that. I just personally don't find it very interesting. Even if I did, I couldn't do it; I'm not a drawer, drawing is the most labored of my labors, I really, quite frankly, hate it. I envy and admire those who are good at it, but I don't strive to match them in their skills because I would never attain their degree of proficiency. I'm competitive, but I know what arenas to compete in and where not to compete. For instance, you will never see me on a basketball court or over a stove flipping mirepoix. I can draw well enough after practice that is like trigonometry homework, but only well enough, never anything beyond that. It's serviceable, and that's all I need. I am not an illustrator, I'm a painter. The process is what consumes me, not necessarily picture-making, although that is always the result. My approach is this, it is to take a central figure of one form or another, and then to slather on a bunch of paint and then to slather on a bunch of other paint, I work directly from the jar, I work to build a painting up, using layer upon layer of paint, knowing I will break it down—it is a conscious and deliberate days-long enterprise (again with the word) in futility. I say futility because I know I ultimately will destroy what I have worked for days to build. And yet it is not futile, too, for this part of the process creates the storms on which my paintings (never) rest. It becomes the painting's history, its prologue, its foundation, its traumatic childhood. This work eventually gets buried, but it's always there, giving the painting its emotional ballast and, in some cases, force. Once I have taken a painting to a place where if not everything, then many things are wrong with it, it then becomes my mortal enemy, and then I set out to destroy this enemy before it destroys me. That is how I approach painting. There is a lot of misery in my approach, but there is triumph too, for as I say, I am quite competitive. It is a war I do not like to lose, and hard-fought battles are the most satisfying ones to win.