I find the process of painting from imagination a wonderful and fun necessity but an incredibly complex challenge. It is necessary because expressing images coming from deep within seems to have a great power of resolution for our inner forces. Nevertheless it is challenging because as an observational painter I want the work to look believable. The composing of images which are not really ‘observed’ in the normal sense of the word is full of technical difficulties. How to find the correct and subtle tonal, shape, and colour relationships of a scene which is really not in front of your eyes? Past masters resolved the problem with extensive studies of all the elements needed to create the work, which is an incredibly skillful but taxing approach. Modern painters and graphic artists rely heavily on conventions, photo references, and software like photoshop to compose realistic and other-worldly imagery. This is a solution which is faster but if not careful it produces art which feels photographic; full of the specific characteristics and distortion found in mechanical reproduction technology. There is not an easy fix; it is a long life pursue which hopefully will one day produce that elusive masterpiece that most painters desire.