Valerie Brennan interviews painter Dale McNeil.

McNeil comments: "I find writing quick notations, recording phrases, or making simple written lists often stimulates drawings that can become a portal to explore an idea in the form of a two-dimensional image. Most paintings are started with these preliminary drawings or informed by existing works. If feeling stifled or inhibited and a new course is desired I respond with accident and chance making marks and forms intuitively until I find a passage into a painting. Regardless of my entry point, once an image emerges I am able to start making critical decisions that will determine the identity of the work."