Unlike many of the artist’s works, this painting does not emerge from a carefully defined personal narrative. Instead, it developed organically from a particular moment, place, and series of unexpected circumstances.

The work was created in Eugene, Oregon, after a gas leak made the artist’s home and studio in Mexico temporarily uninhabitable. Faced with the immediate need for a new place where both he and his wife could live and work, they returned to the Pacific Northwest, where the artist had grown up, and quickly found a temporary home and studio in Eugene.

Two elements from this new environment became the starting points for the painting. Eugene, home to the University of Oregon and its iconic Ducks mascot, inspired the duck leg emerging from the lower left of the composition. The sunflower in the upper right originated from an enormous sunflower the artist encountered at a concert shortly before beginning the work.

From these two seemingly unrelated images, the rest of the composition evolved entirely through instinct. Forms were added, abstracted, layered, and refined without a predetermined narrative or destination. The painting becomes an example of the artist allowing everyday observations and immediate surroundings to enter the work naturally, transforming fragments of lived experience into an unexpected visual language.