Inspiration

Two weeks of traveling in Israel infused my thinking with a completely new to me symbol... stones. The country is made of stone. The countryside is very rocky from the Mediterranean Sea to the Dead Sea and the Sea of Galilee. Rocks are everywhere, and consequently all the buildings are made of rock, whether they are 2000 years old or built yesterday, and they are a uniform color... sort of yellow ochre-ish. Blocks of stone are cut and piled to make the walls of buildings and stones gathered out of the farmers fields are piled to create terraces and walls on the land.

One day we were poking around in the lowest reaches of a church in Jerusalem and found hundreds of little crosses scratched into the foundation walls. Were these messages of early Jesus-followers or simply an early form of graffiti? Whatever, they've already made their way into my artwork. Around the edges of this piece I've carved names of some of the places we visited. This piece is 16 X 12" and is on a cradled panel which is 2" deep.