I love driving through the birch forests at the edges of the mountains of the Northwest. They also make me think of Russia and I wonder if maybe Baba Yaga's hut is somewhere just out of frame, waiting on its chicken legs. There's such a wonderful stark quality to the black and white trunks in winter when they are stripped of all leaves, down to their bare wooden bones. This kind of abstractionism through representational art that depends on the framing of the image is something I constantly come back to in my work. I've always had trouble making abstract work and really loving it on a deep down level, though I very much appreciate it on an intellectual and art historical level. I'm just too much of an illustrator, I think, to ever really cotton to abstract image making for myself, but I sure do love fishing where those streams come together.  The image size is 9" x 12" (23 cm x 30 cm) on acid-free BFK Rives cotton rag paper that is 11" x 15" (28 cm x 38 cm).