I am 72 years old now and I started when I was 17, so I have been painting for over 50 years. And I would have thought that I would have been bored to tears by now, but because it is a creative process and because it does bring you in, I think, in close harmony with your own soul - which by the way I believe is your mind and not something separate, the mind and the soul are really one thing - so your level of consciousness keeps growing. And so I am trying always to do something that will raise that level of consciousness and will have more excellence. I want people to look at my paintings and say, you know when I look at your painting it made my knees weak. I think that if I can accomplish that…because so much of art is just sensational or it has kind of a novel effect, but it doesn’t really stir people to their very depths. That’s what I’m after. Ideally of course - I don’t represent this - but ideally to be a good artist one almost has to be a saint. And my definition of a saint is somebody whose spiritual qualities dominate their material. It’s impossible not to be material because we are material beings, so you can’t wipe that out, not in this life. But those higher principles and that search for truth and for excellence and hard work - all of those old values - if you pursue that, I think that gradually your spiritual qualities start to dominate the material ones. To be an artist means to be something very noble and the artist has a great right in this society not to be some funny thing, but to contribute to the upliftment of people’s souls. Art should uplift not depress.