Dive (detail)

I had saved a picture from a magazine for years because of how it had intrigued me. It was an image of three boys jumping into a deep natural pool on a warm, sunny day. Many years later a friend of mine lost her son and his friend in a drowning accident in one of our local rivers. Some time after that, I pulled out the magazine picture and saw it as inspiration for a work on the transition from life to death. It also recalled a short quote I had written years before that seemed appropriate for the image. Unbelievably, during the whole process of planning and painting "Dive", I did not connect it to the tragedy that had happened so close to home. It was only when, dissatisfied with my initial version of three boys jumping, I removed one figure and re-sized another, that suddenly I realized this was my response to the event. Over a period of maybe fifteen years, all the pieces had come together to create some kind of meaning. The quote, which is subtly painted around the central image and difficult to see on the screen reads: "I suspect that the reason we are given such a fear of death and will to survive is, had we not, we would leap head first into that good night like a child into the river on that first hot day of summer." VIEW higher definition photo BACK to Figurative Works