View From A Canoe

Acrylic on canvas

36" x 48", 2005

When I finished sketching in “Elements of a Disaster”, I was not entirely satisfied with the composition. I decided to make a second version of the painting, separating the elements with a more expansive view of the New York Harbor. Later on, when I started painting it in, I decided to paint the tips of the waves red, to represent the blood of the people who died in the attack. However, after I did that, the waves appeared to look more like flames. I realized then that the subject of this painting had now transformed. The painting had become an image of the rage I was feeling about losing my wife to cancer. I came to realize that this depiction of the World Trade Center attack was a metaphor for my own emotional state at the time I made the painting.