One of the things that I learned many years ago is that there are four things that help you develop understanding or knowledge. And I think art and painting is a form of knowledge. A lot of people think it is just decoration on the wall, but in actual fact painted images or sculptures…if you look at them and think about they can educate you in ways that a book can’t, for example. And so the thing that I learned, a very important thing, is our senses - you know our sight and feeling and taste and touch - that’s a very big thing about how my paintings developed. A lot of times people say that the prairies influence my work. Well they did in a sense, but more importantly the prairies taught me to see, and to think about space and to be aware of texture. So that was one of the big ways. The second way is to think, because people like order, to make a design, a structure that satisfies you, that has unity. And so that has to do with the mind, logic, rational…being rational about something, developing a shape that is very pleasing and very logical. So that is the second big thing that influenced me. And of course the third thing is other people’s art, you know the art of the past. And there are so many artists that I really am very inspired by. And so when you are working on your own work, you are thinking about all of the other paintings you have seen. So some of the qualities that you have learned or absorbed by osmosis from other artists, come out in your work. Now the fourth thing, and this is the last one, the fourth way to knowledge is inspiration. And curiously, it’s very interesting, because the inspiration part of it is the most reliable. Our eyes can play tricks, logic or order can be carried too far and it gets boring because it is too worked out. And if you just copy the other artists like a slave that can kill the spirit in your work. So in the end it’s the process of working…that you get inspired within the process, within the creative dynamic and then that attracts inspiration, and that’s important.