I have painted in abstraction for the last 27 years, except when I enrolled at Florence Academy and the Atelier of Classical Realism. There, I painstakingly drew identical images of body parts in the Charles Bargue Method—a precise system dictating drawing to exact specifications to the micro-millimeter. I would work for hours with a graphite pencil in intense visual focus—concentrating on a black box,  only to have my work erased entirely by my teacher! My native response to that extreme zen visual training, was constant struggle, with curious awareness that time and space seemed to vanish, becoming the work. I learned that the Greeks call that experience “eudamonia”, which means total mind-body engagement, and in my case, that profound experiential  discovery became the ultimate platform to create, and  soulstraction was born as realism’s abstract twin, in total alignment with my soul’s expression.