A REQUIEM IN PROGRESS (2023): As a meditation on loss and the persistence of beauty, this cycle of paintings represents a memoriam for the artist Lawrence Carroll, a good friend who passed away unexpectedly in 2019. I drew inspiration from the Christian Bible’s apocalyptic Book of Revelation and Giuseppe Verdi’s Messa da Requiem as well as the many letters I received over the years from Lawrence and his wife Lucy containing photographs of trees from locales around the world they visited. In honoring our longstanding friendship and his incomparable creative spirit, several of these photographs served as my starting point for this series of intimate paintings produced in tempera and wax on muslin and mounted on wood panels.