''In geometry, an asymptote is a line or curve that approaches, but never quite meets another line. Since the mid 1980’s many of my paintings have been about emotional commitment, and about the way that people touch or do not touch one another, physically and spiritually. Mainly I think intimacy is a matter of approximations; we do the best we can, but most often sympathy, for instance, can only approach empathy, unless it overshoots its goal and sinks in a welter of self-pity. In my experience it is very hard to lose oneself entirely, or give all of oneself, to a cause, or to another human being, or to the act of painting. Although most of these eighteen works on canvas deal with the situation of a single human presence, distorted by mood or circumstance, they are essentially about how hard, and how necessary, it is to try to touch.''