The idea of painting a portrait has had a deep and long-standing hold on me  throughout my career. Portraiture can of course be used to represent the “self” or it can  be used to describe the “other”. For me, both of these modes of representation are  such useful vehicles for discovering more, not only about myself, or another, but of a  more general force at work. The force I sometimes see in a face may be best described  as someone’s “life force”. I choose to use painting as a means of looking past the  surface that photography so often inadequately captures. When I am looking at myself  or another as I work, I am hoping to translate into that piece something of the inner  energy I witness there and often feel strongly when I look both at and within.  One of my favorite painters, Jan Zrzavy who, like myself is Czech-born,  said about the use of color, “The color is the psychological force, the color is the visible  soul.” I feel these words resonate so closely with how I see the colors starting to  emerge in my portraits.