I have been drawing still lifes from life since my mid-teens. I experience a transcendent feeling of connection to the things I draw. It doesn’t matter what they are or how beautiful or mundane they appear. The process of transcription of what I see to the paper is calming and spiritual. I am not competing with a photograph. I love to take photographs. But this is different. Every stroke of the pencil takes a special human imprint that the lens can never duplicate. Every mark has a part of me in it. And no matter how careful I am, I can never get it exactly right. So, I fill in. I have to improvise. I pull a little here and stretch a little there to make it look as close as I can to how I see it. But it never is. And those places where I’ve morphed and hidden are my little secrets. It’s no longer what is there, but what I had to make it with all my human limitations. But now it’s mine. It is a part of me on paper for all to see.