There is a great abundance of symmetry in nature; visually, physically, biologically. The vertical Rorschach is used in psychiatric evaluation because its combination of symmetry and complexity suggests living creatures. The symmetry and complexity of the horizontal Rorschach evoke the living landscape: mountains and water.

The Rorschachs reference the tradition associated with them- interpretation. For me they are always water. Sometimes flowing, sacred water, rolling down the mountain from a faraway glacier, pristine in its virginal and wild woods. Sometimes swamps, sometimes tidal waves coiled up high, about to strike. Life eternally being renewed- paradise and the lotus land. For you, perhaps, something else.

Art is always symbolic, and the ultimate referent for the symbol is always true nature, the Absolute, the unity of subject and object. As in metonymy where the part symbolizes the whole, the painting attempts the impossible, to encapsulate the Whole. It must therefore break the simple symmetry of the Rorschach, as if to indicate still further, yet unseen levels of symmetry, a supersymmetry impossible to conceptualize, let alone depict.

There is a certain ambiguity of space in these paintings that forces the brain to continuously reinterpret the scene. Positive and negative space transpose, what might be rocks and trees suddenly shifts to reflection. Moreover, the spatial ambiguity is not hazily ambiguous but rather shifts dramatically, depending on one's interpretation, almost like some of M.C. Escher’s paradoxes. There is at the same time the shifting between the illusory space of the landscape and the flatness of the paint of canvas.

There are no rules in painting except those dictated by natural laws, such as cause and effect, gravity, electromagnetic wavelengths of color, and the matter/solid dichotomy of wet paint on paper. Freedom within these bounds is infinite, thanks to our predecessors who destroyed all artificial boundaries for art. And yet, there are so many more ways for a painting to fail than to succeed! During the process, however, the painter must forget all about success and failure. The painter must not only give up control, but must become invisible, transparent, void. Something is flowing through, but the painter knows nothing.