I’ll slash a water spill into a wing and smear the wing into a woman. Symbolizing gestures helps me to recognize interconnection—it blurs the boundaries of individual identity. My father taught me to consider interconnection from a young age. He read passages of the Tao Te Ching every night…

“Man follows the earth. Earth follows heaven. Heaven follows the Tao. Tao follows what is natural.”

My Father told me what is natural follows God.

And, for that, I'm glad.

The Tao is about the movements of the world. Painting has helped me understand these passages—the way things flow and follow. I know I’m done with a painting when the composition fulfills its origins. I think of depth as circular. The ocean crashes into its own substance. My mind folds into itself. Natural cycles carry depth in folds. I can’t create depth—the world already exists as profound—but I can rediscover it (and remember the awe of my naïveté).

I play with the edges of individuality to consider how nature begins and ends. This entails watching how a mark bleeds. Sometimes the pigment diffuses. Other times it drops through drips.

It may stagnate.

(Movement tends to depend on how I prime the surface.) My challenge is discovering how bleeding shapes identity.

I enjoy working with watercolor because it bleeds.

What I want out of a composition is often less interesting than what I’ll notice in its divergence from my intent. I see creation as a reconciliation—meditating in the space between what I want and what is. Surrender to a transitioning, developing reality.

I think there’s a fierce beauty in the bleeding of surrender.