A wiser person than I once described art as the intermediary between the physical and the spiritual. I share in that opinion. The creative act is the linchpin of my personal spiritual quest. This does not imply that the creative product is overtly religious or spiritual, simply that the process has a spiritual component.
I cannot say how this precisely fits in with my fixation with painting, or if it even does. I have always been fascinated by depicting the world around me, with an emphasis on painting and drawing.
While I have experimented from time to time with other creative techniques and styles, I always return to the mark making.
I feel the highest sense of creative tension when I depict a form, any form, the greatest charge. There is nothing as interesting as the attempt to capture a image, both physical and emotional, to know the world, if only a little bit, for even a little while. I find nothing so exhilarating and satisfying as success in capture, and nothing as frustrating as the failure.
This struggle could be thought analogous to the perpetual striving to know the true self. Perhaps in knowing the other, oh so little, it is possible learn to know the self just a little bit more.