I began painting in 2005 after retiring from the Boston Globe. I spent most of my 25 years there covering culture and the arts. I was arts editor for a decade, my best time in the business, but I always felt pressured by the need to make art rather than handle it at a distance.

I tend to work intuitively, moved by what I see, with the mind’s eye or the naked eye. Then my relationship to the evolving painting generally tells me what to do.

I’m absorbed with the hilly tangle of woods behind my Truro studio. Early on, I painted literal versions, but later the steep hill and fragments of sky came to influence my art often without showing up in it explicitly.

Most of my work is at least suggestively figurative, but some moves to purer abstraction. My self-portraits — originally warm-up exercises from a readily available model — have gradually taken this direction. They serve as a sandbox and laboratory, but now also have a distinct place in my work.

Ultimately, the most satisfying art presents a shifting balance between figuration and abstraction. The search for that chemistry is a driving force.

Painting is many things. Visceral need. A prayer of some kind. Sometimes, a celebration. Often, a set of problems to be solved. Fuel, frustration, a procession of surprises.

Along with all of this of course, is the hope to variously provoke, engage and delight viewers.

My work has been exhibited on the Outer Cape at the Berta Walker Gallery, Provincetown Art Association and Museum (PAAM), Provincetown Commons, Truro Public Library, the AMZehnder Gallery in Wellfleet, the Seashore Point galleries in Provincetown, and elsewhere. It has also been shown in Cambridge and Somerville.