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 An Argument Against the Inevitable

Oil on cradled wood panel, framed in a shadowbox frame

91.44 x 60.96 cm (36 x 24 in)

An old axe rests embedded in a stump, its handle split where force and time have met repeatedly. The flaw is visible, acknowledged, and ignored. Though dangerous to use, the tool remains in service, sustained by habit and the quiet belief that what has always worked will continue to do so.

The work considers persistence not as heroism, but as continuity practiced beyond reason. The axe is no longer an instrument of action alone; it becomes a record of deferred reckoning. Repair is possible, replacement is available, yet neither occurs. Instead, the object stands as evidence of an argument mounted against certainty itself, an insistence that function can outlast failure, and that the inevitable can be postponed through use.

In An Argument Against the Inevitable, resistance is not dramatic. It is ordinary, familiar, and quietly dangerous.

Note:

When I asked about the broken axe, he shrugged and said, “Still works.”
It wasn’t pride. It wasn’t denial. It was simply the way he had been raised; you don’t discard what still has use. Not tools. Not time. Not yourself.