THE SILENT AX
Egg Tempera
17 x 22 inches
Private Collection
Often times I am asked what inspires me to paint a painting and I often answer that there are many things that can trigger that impulse. Sometimes it is simply the way something looks, sometimes it is an event, which was the case with “Mourning Dove,” or sometimes you may want to make a social statement. This was the case in this particular painting. I wanted to make a statement about how I feel about the cutting of the rain forests around the world. Here in this rusted ax blade I saw the symbolism of this feeling. The rust on the blade indicated that the ax hadn’t been used for a long time and I thought that the sound the ax made had long ago grown silent. I thought if all of the axes around the world grew silent, the forests could survive and flourish. This was the my wish and the statement I was making with “The Silent Ax”.