This is a new painting, 12″ by 18″ on paper, that I’m calling To the End of Time. It’s another take on the Baucis and Philemon theme that I have used and talked about here before, from the Greek myth from the poor couple who were favored by the Gods for their generosity of spirit and were rewarded by being allowed to be united for eternity in the form of two trees that sprouted from the same trunk.
This piece has a wonderful simplicity of form and composition, letting the depth in the colors and the the movement created in the texture of the sky and in the foliage of the trees carry the narrative and emotional load. I think this painting is very much enhanced by its spareness of detail, making the central figures seem as they exist in some otherworldly plane, free from the drone of the everyday.
The sky here takes on a character of its own with the swirling bands of gesso that dance across it. There is also a nice intensity in the color and contrast of it. This is one of those pieces that I like to use as an example of how much can be said with little, how each bit of the painting, every square inch, has visual interest. This was a premise I started painting with many years ago and when my work is at its best, this is very evident.
Well, at least to me.
Redtree Times 
Let me be the first to commend you for your attractive new painting. Did you choose the warm colors in it to represent sunset? As for forms, the scraggly shape of your tree reminds me of the plentiful Ashe juniper trees here in central Texas, whose trunks occasionally contort as they grow.
Your comment about how much can be said with little reminds me of the Latin saying “multum in parvo,” literally ‘much in little’ (I don’t know if the Greeks had a comparable adage). I’ve sometimes favored minimalism in my photography; one example, which happens to harmonize with the colors in your painting and is also botanical but has even less detail, is
In any case, I’m glad to see your work.
Thank you. Steve, your work is beautiful. What a wonderful find in the color and texture of such a simple comsposition and subject as a bulrush leaf. Multum in parvo, indeed.