heart to heart

in a private collection

While the paintings I painted about four years ago of this barn in Ferrisburgh
are called The Urge to Merge, this painting takes the lovely merging of two
structures and sees it in a deeply healthy love rather than as a need to merge.
We all need somebody to lean on, as Bill Withers sings so beautifully. At the
same time I am aware that mortality is inching closer and loss is another companion
I keep nearby.

To live in this world

you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it
go,
to let it go.

— Mary Oliver
from “In Blackwater Woods”