Why I Paint: A Personal Manifesto on Abstraction, Time, and Meaning
I don’t paint what I see—I paint what I feel beneath the surface. Abstraction allows me to explore time, emotion, and presence without the need for explanation. In this post, I reflect on why I paint, how I think about meaning, and what abstraction continues to teach me about being human.
Unraveling, 5ft x 5ft, Black & White, 2024
I paint to make sense of what can’t be explained. Not with words, not with logic. I paint because there are experiences—internal, emotional, metaphysical—that resist language. Abstraction gives them form.
My work is not representational. I’m not trying to capture a landscape or a figure. I’m trying to translate the weight of time, the feeling of silence, the complexity of thought into color, gesture, and movement. That’s what abstraction allows: not a picture of reality, but an encounter with it. Direct, unfiltered.
I didn’t come to this through art school or early immersion in painting. My path was different—rooted in mathematics, technology, and entrepreneurship. I spent decades building systems, solving problems, and designing outcomes. All of that was meaningful work. But it was structured, linear, measurable. Painting, by contrast, is open, unpredictable, and intensely personal. It doesn’t solve—it reveals.
I gravitate toward abstraction because it mirrors the way we actually experience life: fragment by fragment, sensation by sensation. It allows ambiguity. It embraces contradiction. And it invites each viewer to bring their own meaning to the work. I don’t want to dictate an interpretation. I want to offer space—for feeling, for resonance, for discovery.
Time plays a central role in my process. Some works emerge in a single, breathless session—an improvisational gesture caught in motion. Others unfold slowly over weeks, accumulating layer by layer, building tension and depth. Time is embedded in the work. It’s in the rhythm of the marks, in the stillness of the negative space, in the texture that forms when something is added, erased, and reimagined.
When I paint, I’m often not trying to express something I already understand. I’m painting to find out what I feel. The canvas becomes a mirror—not of the external world, but of the internal one. It reflects where I am, what I’m resisting, what I’m opening to.
And through this act, I connect—not just with myself, but with others. Because while the form is abstract, the invitation is human. We all know what it feels like to face the unknown, to hold complexity, to seek beauty in the midst of uncertainty.
That is why I paint. To give shape to what is felt but unseen. To honor the mystery. To create space—open, resonant, alive—where meaning isn’t prescribed, but discovered.
