Artists, paintings and tables brimming with red apples struggle to be in the world as only themselves. I try to make paintings in which artist, apples, and canvas each stops short of victory in this struggle. For the viewer, joyful representations of things in our life — an apple that almost consents to sinking into canvas, a painting that almost becomes a table spilled with fruit, an artist with a humility that tempers responsibility, who has almost finished what he thinks is his work.