I do not want to become a better artist. I want to become a better human being. I am not interested in making paintings, films, sculptures, or prints. I am interested in any kind of work that makes me more compassionate toward myself and toward other persons in the world. Art only matters if it is capable of doing something of human significance that cannot be done in any other way, and I believe that it is: I believe that the arts alone can adequately address the non- verbal, the moments and experiences that pervade every life but that cannot be accessed in ordinary conversation. To neglect a kind of visual dialogue about the non-verbal is to fall short in attentiveness to self and others, and thus to neglect an activity fundamental to compassion. The works that I have made this past year attend to the inarticulable pain of my own interior life while confronting my tendency toward despair. I want to resist alleviation in the face of formative and formidable tensions; I also want to recognize and place hope in the presence of God as it appears in quiet moments and small, ordinary things: a dandelion, settling dust, the late day sun on a bedroom wall. I hope well-composed work that attends to these places within myself and these experiences of the Infinite may also attend to similar places and experiences within others. The world is not in need of more art; the world is in need of more compassion. Persons are not in need of distractions; persons are in need of attention and care. Art must not be about art alone; art must be about all of us being less alone. Art must be about the way of love.