Acrylics and plaster on panel

50” x 25.5” framed

The inspiration for this piece was a tree, a forest, and a fairy tale.

The street near my house has a number of Sycamore trees. They are very handsome trees. They are distinguished from other trees by their mottled bark which flakes off in large irregular masses, leaving the surface mottled and gray, greenish-white and brown.

In my imagination, I could see Le Petite Chaperon Rouge (Little Red Riding Hood) lost in a forrest of such trees, just as she first encounters the wolf. According to Wipipedia “The story had as its subject an "attractive, well-bred young lady", a village girl of the country being deceived into giving a wolf she encountered the information he needed to find her grandmother's house successfully and eat the old woman while at the same time avoiding being noticed by woodcutters working in the nearby forest. Then he proceeded to lay a trap for Red Riding Hood. Little Red Riding Hood ends up being asked to climb into the bed before being eaten by the wolf, where the story ends. The wolf emerges the victor of the encounter and there is no happy ending.” According to Charles Perrault, who first wrote the story”

“From this story one learns that children, especially young lasses, pretty, courteous and well-bred, do very wrong to listen to strangers, And it is not an unheard thing if the Wolf is thereby provided with his dinner. I say Wolf, for all wolves are not of the same sort; there is one kind with an amenable disposition – neither noisy, nor hateful, nor angry, but tame, obliging and gentle, following the young maids in the streets, even into their homes. Alas! Who does not know that these gentle wolves are of all such creatures the most dangerous!”