After exiling myself from the artworld in the late 90’s, I returned, the prodigal son, with my tail between my legs, hoping for a new future. I began humbly, working in a studio provided by NYU where I was teaching, and looking for a new direction. This work was a memorable breakthrough for me. I was looking at images from magazines, as my history then and still involves sometimes appropriation, but the thing of this work was that my painterly verve superseded the image, using the original photo as a Proustian madeleine moment as a talisman to project my feelings into my brush. When I finished to painting in my reverie, I was astonished that this image emerged, to me it had a life of its own, transmuting my feelings into the image to come out with something new, and a romantic feeling of how I was at that moment.