There is a question artists hear often, sometimes directly, sometimes implied: “Why don’t you stay in one style?” Some subjects demand restraint. Others require intensity. Some call for precise rendering. Others lose their force if over-defined. For me, the style, the tone, and the presentation must obey the idea and the narrative behind it. The technique follows the narrative. Not the other way around.

There is a particular kind of comment that returns again and again under one of my paintings. “This is AI.” “The hands are wrong.” “There are missing fingers.” It always sounds confident. And it is always wrong. Not because the comment is malicious, but because it reveals something more interesting than error. It reveals how rarely we are asked to truly look. The problem is not anatomy The painting in question, Tootsies , is figurative. Extremely so. There is no abstraction t

People often ask me, “What does it mean?”Sometimes they ask it with curiosity. Sometimes they ask it as if meaning were a label I forgot to attach. I understand the impulse. We live in an age of captions, summaries, and instant conclusions. We are trained to consume. Scroll and move on. Painting does not work like that. A painting is not a problem to solve. It is a space to enter.