root ball

Root ball
Common buckthorn
Stone Hill, gathered December 2015

TRANSCRIPT:
With regard to making art, even the most objectively rendered image is a product of the imagination. But regardless of idea, media, or technique, all images are bound by precise time.

I am fascinated by the layers of time at Stone Hill. As I make art, I am always cognizant of where we are in time, as well as where time is being recorded—sometimes quite literally in the autobiographical text I weave throughout my paintings.

I've chosen to celebrate a root ball of a fallen cluster of buckthorn trees not far from the old Stone Hill Road that has been in use for more than a century. The trees have telltale growth rings that show how time has moved and been recorded. I’ve recorded my appreciation of this tree and roots with drawings—making them from one season to the next, one after the other, as time happens.

These drawings are made in a book that is not a sketchbook, but a small photo album where I appreciate the literal passing of a life. What interests me is how the passing of my wife is embraced by drawing a tree, a tree whose rings have seen countless other wives living and passing. In fact, someone skilled at counting rings could probably pinpoint exactly how many lives have come and gone on Stone Hill since this tree was a sprout.