The Thing In The Yard, oil on canvas, 36 x 36 inches, work in progress, copyright ©2012

The "Thing" is an old dead stump that has provided a seedbed for all kinds of different flora. It lives on the same property that I live on, but perhaps has deeper roots. It is a living palimpsest, a work in progress itself. My student Ritsuko Taneda painted it before me, when it was less unwieldy. I hope that she doesn't mind that I share her fascination with this wild expression of life that grows out of the rotting and desiccated corpse of the past. The tree that this stump once was at one time longed for and reached toward the Sun.