These paintings are about bad things. Not just the today-was-a-bad-day kind of bad, but the bigger, more universal kind that doesn’t go away when the next day comes, or even the next month. I don’t know how or when these bad things got hold of me, but for several years now I’ve been trying to find a way to get them out of me and into my paintings.

Some of it even seemed to work, but the badness still kept haunting me. Now, painting these works filled with flames, I felt like things were finally getting a little easier. That’s the magic trick of art, isn’t it? The works may be about bad things, but if the works themselves are good, then somehow, in the end, everything is all right.

The bad shrinks back down to its proper size, and the world – my world – is back in balance. At least I hope so.