I hope to capture the precarious nature of life on the margins of land and sea in this painting I began last Friday. I’m using one of the many photographs I took in the summer of the cypresses in Point Lobos as inspiration. It’s just so stunning to see these lone trees clinging to sheer rock face, pummeled by the Pacific! I like how the tree is dwarfed by the massive outcropping of rock on which it clings, rock which has been stripped nearly bare by the ocean. It’s almost a portrait of a landscape in which the skin and muscle has been pulled away to reveal the skeletal structure. Although the cypress symbolizes death and mourning, here I think it is a metaphor for perseverance.