Presenting a painting to the world is a risky business. Of course a painting is never finished. It is usually published with some reluctance since it is the next painting that will reflect my genius. Of course that painting inevitably fall short of the mark, leaving the next painting to assume the role of my best work, and so on and on through a lifetime. Fortunately my patrons apparently do not let such thoughts, if they ever think them, enjoy the paintings that they possess. There is a passage in the book Up in the Old Hotel, a compilation of the work of Joseph Mitchell that I often turn over in my mind:

• He sometimes seems to feel that his success as a painter is a joke he has played on the world. “Nearly about every fishing captain from Point Jude to New London has one of my paintings hung up in his home,” Ellery says, “and every now and then, when I’m driving past those homes at night, I can’t help saying to myself, ‘God 'A;’mighty! What have I done?”