I don't spend a great deal of time thinking about, or trying to explain, my creative process. When I do try to verbalize, I believe it is generally a matter of describing what I did as if I knew what I was doing when I did it, which I probably didn't.  I certainly do not approach my work with a set of rules that must be followed. I do, nonetheless, consider myself a surrealist in my approach to the painting and sculpture I create. When working, I follow the direction of my subconscious as surrealists have done since the early years of the century; as is codified in Andre Breton's Manifesto of Surrealism of 1924; and as it has been practiced by  Abstract Expressionists since the late 1940's. I am not interested in prettiness, ugliness, or a literal statement of any kind. My work is, however, not completely non-objective nor completely driven by the subconscious. It is a process that utilizes a play between "psychic automatism" and cognition that finds, and manipulates,  images as they appear  in an illusory space, though the images and space are, quite often, not readily tangible. I ascribe rightness or wrongness to each step of the process, and to the finished work, by weighing the extent to which it allows me to become in empathy with a world that has not existed before the moment of its perception. Further, I want to leave that world not saying that I have had  a new experience or seen a new place but that I have "experienced" in a new way. The "place" is in the head of the viewer as well as on the surface of the canvas and, to the extent that it becomes common to more than one person, we might reassess Jung's theories of a "collective subconscious" and "archetypal imagery". The distinction between the viewer's response to representational elements of the work and his or her response to the energy of its pure visual elements is nebulous to an extent that the viewer must become an active participant in the aesthetic experience that is created. Kinda like those pictures in the psychiatrist's office but more expensive.