Jennifer Samet interviews painter Jason Stopa on the occasion of his exhibition Double Trouble at Hionas Gallery, New York, on view through April 25, 2015.

Stopa observes: "At the end of the day I am most interested in [the paintings] being read as formal images. I am less interested in images that are solely based on ideas. I do not accept the idea that language prescribes how we are supposed to see a thing. I think it is the opposite. When you go back in history, language comes out of the visual. It comes out of people making marks — symbols that become metaphors, allegories, narratives. I think that we understand and respond to things first on a sensory and somatic level. Then we place conceptual and philosophical ideas on what we have seen."