this is an excerpt from an old personal journal entry, but its subject matter has been on my mind a lot, so I'm reposting it here.

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All that we can create is what is alive in us at this very moment. Art is always a distilled and direct reflection of who we are.

This is why when an image or concept pours forth into my consciousness and I do not lay it down on paper right away, most of the time it will not be there in truth years later. It was no less true when it occurred to me, it is simply who I was at that moment and not necessarily who I am now. The few images that have lasted years in my head without manifestation on paper and yet are still true in me are those few archetypal things that I take as more constant. They are not completely constant or concrete, but thus far they’ve lasted the longest over time, and so are closer to those ideas in me which may be timeless. That is why the images that have stayed with me reflect timelessness: archetypes of death and nothingness; of the peeling away of reality to reveal nonreality. I often depict a duality, but not as itself: it is showing a duality in order to expose the illusion of it. It is to evoke in the viewer the deep questioning of reality, duality, and other concepts by experiencing at the same time these concepts and a deep-seated unsettling or disillusionment with them.

The highest purpose in my life is to create. All other things serve that purpose, and so every moment and whatever fills it is important, but primarily in terms of how it serves that purpose. Every experience, every love and passion, sadness, fear: all of it builds who I am, and I pour that into whatever I create. What creates me creates my art. But the cycle is self-reflexive. I create what further shapes me, and so through art, I continually am creating myself and my world.