This piece was pretty unusual in that I suddenly had an image in my mind while sitting in a church service. The lyrics of a song, “land of the living” had stuck in my mind and I first had an image of a tree growing out of a nest with roots coming from below, which I quickly sketched in the border of the bulletin I had with the lyrics, which became the title for the piece. This is also the first piece that I collaged together different photos in a surrealistic manner, and when I sat down to play with different photos, I much preferred the flowers growing out of the nest to a tree. When I work with photos to collage together, I’m not comfortable working on the computer, but rather I prefer to print out lots of small images and play with them together, like working with a jigsaw puzzle. The text that is in a receding layer, is actually a Psalm that includes the title phrase. I’ve also included photos of insects, including a cicada, another insect that goes through metamorphosis and speaks of life transformation, a recurrent theme in many of my pieces.
Land of the Living is currently available at Xanadu Gallery in Scottsdale, Arizona.