I love the excitement of standing outdoors in the middle of a beautiful scene and painting en plein air, but sometimes it's a nice change of pace to slow down and paint a still life. It's a more controlled, quiet process, and the act of painting becomes almost meditative. Unlike the fast-changing light I often encounter outside, I can make the light relatively constant in the studio, and can control exactly what I want the set up to look like - no cars parking in front of the scene or sun dipping behind the ridge of the mountains before I'm done. I brew up a pot of coffee, put on some appropriate music (opera arias, baroque chamber music, or Gregorian chants), and settle down. I've always been fascinated with glass and collect a variety of colors and sizes of vessels to use in my paintings. The task of depicting transparency while still showing a solid form endlessly challenges me. I've found that I can bring no preconceived ideas to painting glass: it's different every time depending on the light shining on it and through it. With solid, opaque objects, there is usually a predictable light and shadow pattern, with reflected light and highlights thrown in, but with glass, it's never that easy. Only direct, careful observation creates the form. Painting glass is the quickest way I know of to get on the left side of the brain and "in the zone" . When I'm going through a dry spell with my work and need to get back into the zone, I get out some glass and get lost in those reflections and refractions and the pure, abstract joy of painting.