Space in a Box

These are my only artworks painted in oil. Like the Plainsong Elegies, these "pictures" are displayed like relics or artifacts, floating in an artist-made wood box constructed with the help of Bob Mason. Each box is about a foot square, with the painted paper measuring only 2 - 4 inches across. They spring from the experience of standing before the ocean - and also the nighttime sky - and being suddenly aware of the limits of our imagination. When we look at the sea or the sky, we are always seeing only the tiniest fraction of it despite its appearing so incredibly immense. It is the closest we can come to apprehending infinity, something that expands outward indefinitely; we can only grasp it as an abstract concept. Instead of trying to portray these things as vast and expansive, with no boundaries, I have converted them into their opposite, something small, solid and contained.