The make or break with my works is whether they breathe or not, if they are not alive, I discard them. It's important to me that my works seem edible, not as in delicious, but as in a presence that is real in the world. I want the work to give a tactile feeling, it has to give a bodily sensation that transcends language and the conscious mind.
It's a thing that is hard to define because it is not about craftsmanship or tricks, because there are plenty of painters that use thick lustrous brushstrokes whose painting seems lifeless, and then there are painters who barely use any paint whose works vibrate.
That's one of the places where painting really becomes interesting to me, because there is something there that we cannot understand, or at least, we haven’t discovered it yet. I think there is a big difference between knowing and understanding. And I work with, am interested in the knowing – you can know a painting even though you might not understand it – but it’s the knowing that has the most value not the conscious understanding. With knowing I mean recognizing in your bones. You might not understand what’s going on but you recognize “I know you (the painting) from somewhere, I’ve never seen you before, yet I’ve known you all my life”.