Squeeze one end of a water balloon, and the opposite end will bulge. This is a good way to think about pictorial space. Tension can’t exist without release. When I apply color, I ask, Is it squeezing or bulging? The water-balloon analogy dovetails with Hans Hofmann’s theory of push and pull, in which objects appear to advance when we focus on them, while those in the periphery recede, just as warm colors appear close and cool tones farther away. As I paint, I try to imagine each greasy brushstroke as a three-dimensional object, like a fistful of cake icing. What would the back of the stroke look like? What happens when you stack one on top of another? The viewer sees just the front of a brushstroke on a flat surface, but the painter has to consider all sides, as if standing inside the picture looking out.
The only truth a painter possesses is the flat picture plane; it is the great democratizer, the glorious limitation that joins all of us who dream of light where there is darkness and space where there is flatness. When you observe an artist close one eye and hold out his or her thumb, you are witnessing a violent, destructive act; a Category-5 hurricane, a bull shark attack, and the overthrow of a government all wrapped in a simple gesture that blasts the painter from the three- dimensional world into the two-dimensional plane. The laws of nature are bent to fit the laws of art. Every painting bears the evidence of destructive behavior and violent thought, a breaking down of one thing to expose another. You have to kill something to make something.