When I painted Ivy, Window and Tree (1981), I wanted the tree outside the window to assert a visual energy strong enough to stand against the pale blue sky behind it. The close horizontal view of the thick window frame establishes the sense of distance—an unknown background space that the eye must interpret through that single architectural barrier. The tree limbs, rendered quickly and sometimes in fragmented strokes, came from an intuitive response: partly committed to realism, partly enjoying the immediacy of gestural action.
I have always liked the tension between gesture and precision, especially as it relates to inwardness and outwardness. In this way, Ivy, Window and Tree may be my most direct and simple expression of that reciprocating feeling. The painting holds a straightforward encounter with image and identity, something I explored earlier in Self (1976)—a self‑portrait in a small mirror leaning against a bold black‑and‑white wall covering, where only a hint of the face appears. In that drawing, the picture frame becomes an emotional barrier. In Ivy, Window and Tree, I wanted the thick window frame to behave similarly, to act as a boundary between the viewer and the exterior space.
This idea of barriers—visual, emotional, perceptual—appears throughout my work. In Inside/Outside – Outside/Inside, the boundaries multiply: the lantern, chair, and broom handle sit plainly in front, while buildings and a figure reflected in the glass represent another exterior layered through reflection. The interior and exterior become intertwined yet separated, each held behind its own threshold.
Ivy, Window and Tree distills that dynamic into its simplest form: a window frame, a tree, a sky, and the quiet tension between gesture and structure that defines the space between them.