DYING EMBERS
Egg Tempera
23 x 33 inches
Private Collection
To the artist, after the watering can, the ash bucket is the most graceful of the household utilitarian objects. He can still remember his grandfather putting the bucket of ashes out on the curbside when the house was still heated with coal. The Wiltraut home now has a woodstove and the ritual of “putting out the ashes” is still practiced. In “Dying Embers” we see the bucket of still hot ashes cooling while the evening sun illuminates the ground pebbles as if they themselves were dying embers.