Love is a ladder

Acrylic on canvas, 24" × 30"

From the Memoryscapes series. The two structures occupy the vertical canvas: below, white lines sketched as if drawn directly onto the dark earth — are these a site plan drawn there before the beginning? Do they represent the intentions of an architect tasked with building a home? What was being measured and staked out, what was being framed? What future set and setting was being aspired to?

The sun is setting on the lower structure, which has essentially been reduced to a blueprint. The site lines no longer hold space for its orientation, having been knocked askew by the accumulated weight of the memories used in its formation. It now blends into the sunset. Yet its interior is still present, and inside night has already fallen, if indeed the sun was capable of reaching the landscape captured within its gossamer walls.

Above rooted, inhabited, trees grow from inverted base of the upper structure, floating free on new ground that rests upon the sky, like heaven, far removed from the ground that originally defined it. There the sun is still high in the sky, casting a warm light on the branches. Ladders appear at both registers, suggesting ascent rather than return and power one finds from being loved. .

Original acrylic painting by Seattle artist Matthew Holloway.