Amelia Stafford Todd

I'm starting to believe that every successful painting I've ever made has been about how to balance chaos and order, accident and intent, the verbal and nonverbal, the explainable and the not. Or maybe not so much to balance, but to hold them together, to let them exist in the same space. I keep thinking about what Keats called "Negative Capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason." The imagery I'm interested in changes and evolves, but the essence of the process of painting for me always involves a search to visually express both control and letting go. Amelia Stafford Todd can be contacted at astafford@comcast.net.