As a painter, Michael Dickter's aim is to develop a visual language — a vocabulary of images, marks and colors — expressive of personal experiences and observations. For long his work has dealt with issues of memory and home, stability and freedom, personal history and communication. An encouter with mortality has refocused his work. Now beauty and fragility, the fleeting impermanence yet profound magnificence of life informs my work. Flowers now seem to resonate with that fragility, with that beauty, as well as that hope and compassion. Wings and boats also speak to the passages we must experience. Ideas are conjured with these, pushing and pulling and glimpsed through layers of paint and awareness, reaching for connections. On a physical level, Michael is fascinated with making marks on a canvas. The process, the decisions, and the joy of paint on a built-up surface are essential to him.