There is a magnificent feeling of exhaustion after a grueling day of demanding creative effort. It feels like every nerve your body is finely wired and sensitive to the vitality of living. Absorption is a painting of that moment. I worked on this, full-time, over a year making light, anatomy, and color studies in pencil and pastel. I would then take those drawings and integrate the information for the final painting. The red clothe was a very fine piece of brocade with intense shocking and sensual color--I loved juxtapositioning it against the green and yellow tones. Absorption followed on the heels of Denouement and they share something of the yellow-rich light. This red brocade also appears in the painting, Blithe. With Absorption, as well as my other major canvases, I  isolate the most exceptional  moment in my existence, focus on it, and bring out the essential details that convey my wonder of that experience. I was after extreme translucency with subtle differences in the highlights, as if they were leap-frogging from limb to limb.