In the animated classic “Yellow Submarine” the Beatles find themselves trapped with no way out. During the apparently futile effort to escape, one asks Ringo if he has anything in his pocket. He replies that he has nothing but a hole in his pocket. “Perfect.” He takes out the hole and lays it down. The four jump through the hole and continue on their journey.

I was hitchhiking to Iowa back in 1974 and along a desolate stretch of back road an older model Ford stopped. Although the guy looked a little rough-around-the-edges, I took the ride. He did make an effort to converse, asking me what I was up to. I told him I was an art major and that I liked to paint. He told me the story of how he ended up driving along that road allowing him the moment to pick me up. He relayed that he was a painter too, painting barns up north. He said he became entranced by the dark shadow in the upper doorway to a hayloft. He was so drawn to that dark opening that the next thing he knew he had passed right through it and found himself driving along in southern Minnesota.

Luckily for me he was turning off my route at the next intersection. I was able to escape only slightly confused or dumbfounded. The idea that he mysteriously transported through the dark opening stayed with me.

More recently I found myself disappearing in the Sudoku puzzle. I needed an escape and the addictive quality of the popular game worked wonderfully. As I concentrated, various worries and stresses would still come to mind. I would write them in the margins as prayer requests or laments.

The prayer of the Sudoku is for wisdom; to be able to foresee the consequences of an act and then to be able to act in ways that result in success. It is a prayer or a search for connections and relationships that will enable one to make the right choices. And there are right choices. Each number’s location is predetermined. Any wrong move will result in failure. If one wants to win, there usually is only one set of choices that will work. The pursuit of the right move and the gratification that results in success provide ample distraction from the various anxieties that plague people. I was in need of just such a distraction. As the puzzle became a meditation or prayer I began to discover the paintings that make up this exhibition.

The Untitled Sudoku Paintings were made by first scanning the pages of finished, Sudoku puzzles and then enlarging them on a computer. The resulting photographs of the pages were printed on 100% cotton paper using an Epson 9600, pigment based, inkjet printer. Then I tried to paint around the numbers inside the squares with a color that matched the black ink so that they would become invisible, or at least, difficult to see. In the earlier paintings I would alter the dark color as I painted—in an effort to find the “right” black, or the right “black.” But, for a variety of reasons, that “blackish” ink color remained elusive. You can see me mixing around and searching colors trying to find the color appropriate for the lighting, the angle of view or, the time of day. Sometimes the colors I used match the light and angle and when that happens the numbers disappear and the square becomes a hole one can escape through.