I look out into the snowy white, stick, stark trees with black leaf bags blowing wildly in the wind…the bags look like crows, wings flapping crazily. It is a landscape I am familiar with and yet it never ceases to amaze me in its barren structure. I try to imagine the life beyond it’s desolation but long for sun, and something to break the landscape with color, or something that resembles an organic living process. This landscape saddens me, reminds me of death, and loss and with a sick feeling I realize what I am losing. My friend slips away and this heightened awareness plunges me into the landscape I dread, one of stick, stark trees, and black crows flailing their wings in desperation…..what would a painting or image of loss look like? Would there be any color to break up the landscape of the canvas, of my soul? Would there be “life” to this canvas? Would there be movement? How would the ‘dance’ look like as my mentor, Steve Carpenter explains, when he refers to the process the artist uses in placing paint on the canvas or the way a photographer uses the camera to capture the life, the essence of the image? What do you think this image of loss would be like?