Approaching Storm

Provenance

I came across it very early in my framing career, only a year or so in. Ann was a client of the shop, and the moment I saw this piece I was completely taken with it — that wind-bent tree holding its ground against a sky about to break. I didn't have the means to buy it myself, so I did what any besotted nineteen-year-old would do: I begged my mother to buy it for me for my birthday. She did.

I had no idea at the time what that gift would set in motion. What began as one painting I couldn't stop thinking about slowly, and then not so slowly, became a habit, then a passion, then something closer to an obsession — a lifetime of seeking out pieces that stopped me in my tracks the way this one did. Every artwork in this collection, in a sense, is a descendant of this one.