Looks gorgeous.

Have you ever explained your fascination with stairways? If so, I missed it.

Well, I've always liked them, since the long-ago days when I came to school in Berkeley, and, coming from a somewhat bland suburban environment in South California, discovered stairways in places like Strawberry Canyon. I was thrilled.

I love walking and hiking, and discovered that urban hiking (in places not destroyed by the thrice-damnable "modern architect") was my favorite sort. SF is an order-of-magnitude better for this than Berkeley was.

And then recently my doctor suggested that I should get some daily aerobic exercise. And since my time is in extremely short supply, and I drive by certain stairways almost daily, I started stopping for a quick run up the hill. It's great exercise. (What I would really like would be a sort of MC Escher stair, that only goes up, and does not require the tiresome necessity of going back down.)

Awesome. Wish I was there.

I was wondering from an artist's perspective.

An artist chooses subject matter because it reflects himself in some way. For example, right now I'm painting a cupola on top of an old rooming house. It's a place from which you can see a great distance but it's also a place where you can't live a life. It's a metaphor of a head without a body and a consideration of the life of the mind in isolation.

So naturally I wondered whether there was a psychological resonance in your appreciation for stairways. You seem especially delighted in the kind that you come upon unexpectedly, that takes surprise turns, and renders a altered view with every upward step. You are thrilled by the stairs ascending but find the return to earth a tiresome necessity.

If you were an artist, you'd probably paint stairways.

Perceptive.

I would never paint a cupola. I probably wouldn't even go in a cupola. I am anti-cupola.

The paintings I would paint, if I could paint, include wandering mysterious forest paths with stone steps, often blending into soil and fallen leaves so that it is not clear if they are natural or man-made.

More generally, I love things that combine order with complexity. The intricate repeating patterns of ferns thrill me; a shapeless plant I find boring no matter how lovely the flowers or leaves. Louis Sullivan is one of my heroes.

The "the life of the mind in isolation" is a nightmare to me. Which is part of why I am moving into the Catholic ambit. Catholicism is very "thingy" and sensuous and full of stuff you can touch and do and smell.

You would not like my cupola painting. It's good work - vivid, tactile, and convincing - but there is an unwelcome undertone of threat. It was supposed to be about the mind and faith but I think it's about the brain and dogma.

There's something optimistic about stairways, especially out of doors. I'll add them to my list of things to look for. For years I photographed bridges - I even made a girlfriend park on a busy bridge in a sleet storm so I could snap a parallel bridge - but they never quite expressed what I had in mind. They make connections but don't advance. A stairway might be a more useful metaphor. Thanks.

There was a great set of stairways at the high school where I did drama... one set was wide and well-spaced, perfect for running up, and another was almost a ramp, so you could run up one, run down another, and around and around... which I did ten times before one opening night because I was a little too hyper.

Okay, more than a LITTLE too hyper.