81 x12 x 1.75


oil on canvas



The very long thin format of this and other paintings is compositionally challenging. I’m painting a sliver of form, space or time and similar to arctic ice tube samples these slivers tell a deep, ancient stories.  I am also influenced by ancient Chinese landscapes. This painting was inspired by Lewis’s poems: Fossil 1919 and Fossil 1971.

Fossil, 1919
By Janet Lewis

I found a little ancient fern
Closed in a reddish shale concretion,
As neatly and a charmingly set in
As my grandmother’s face
In a round apricot velvet case.

Fossil, 1975

Changed and not changed. Three million years.
This sunlight-summoned little fern
Closed in a cenotaph of silt
Lies in my hand, secret and safe.
In quiet dark transformed to stone,
Cell after cell to crystal grown,
The pattern stays, the substance gone.
Changed and not changed. Three million years.
The Spirit, ranging as it will,
In sun, in darkness, lives in change.
Changed and not changed. The spirit hears
In drifting fern the morning air.


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