54” x 30”, oil on canvas

The rise and fall of human breath

becomes a long complaint.

I learned to meditate by counting breaths. Gradually I realized that each round of meditation was made up of a surprisingly small number of breaths. At times I wondered, how many breaths will make up my lifetime?

As I worked on the painting, it gradually became like a block of fog, the letters appearing and disappearing just out of reach. Fog perhaps is the breath of soil.

I sometimes think that breaths are the constantly vanishing record of a life. For some, or for many, they are a record of human suffering.