What is painting in the postmodern 21st Century, after the cold war and during the digital revolution? It is what happens in the studio. It is the result of something like a process, a series of experiences, actions and reactions. It is, when successful, the resolution of a multitude of factors, many of them opposites. Light and dark, illusion and flatness, chaos and order, intention and accident, tradition and the new are some. This makes the artist a juggler who must keep many balls up in the air. The finished work is nothing less than the product of alchemy.