I paint or draw objects which delight my eye and invite contemplation, as an end in itself. However, I also enjoy the juxtaposition of common objects and symbolic objects, allowing the viewer to make their own associations. No "meanings" are intended, other than what each symbol or object suggests to the individual.
"Nothing can be more abstract, more unreal, than what we actually see. We know that all we can see of the objective world, as human beings, never really exists as we see and understand it. Matter exists, of course, but has no intrinsic meaning of its own, such as the meanings we attach to it. We can know only that a cup is a cup, that a tree is a tree".
-Giorgio Morandi