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Firewood 

watercolour on BFK Rivers printmaking paper 

21 x 17 cm  (8.27 x 6.69 in)

The cross-sections of wood expose what normally remains hidden.
Growth made visible as rings, each one marking a season already passed. Years of weather, light, drought, and abundance accumulate quietly within the body of the tree.

Nothing in the surface suggests this record. Only when the form is cut open does the interior speak.

Time does not disappear.
It gathers.

What once carried life now carries its measure.

Note:

I grew up in homes heated by wood.
My grandmother’s house had a hand pump in the kitchen and a wood-burning stove that carried most of the work of winter.

Chopping and stacking wood was not a chore, it was simply part of the day. Logs split open to show their rings, fresh and pale. The resin still soft, sticky like honey, though it never tasted like it.

The smell of cut wood is one of those things that never quite leaves you.