During the pandemic I was going through my archives and came across a picture of a palm tree I had taken on a gray winter day in New Orleans. Growing up in New York, palm trees have always represented something exotic and beautiful, but this picture made me a little sad. So I decided to fix it.
"Take an object / Do something to it / Do something else to it. [Repeat.]” Jasper Johns wrote that in 1964. I’m not sure when I first came across that quote, but the idea has always resonated with me, and has often been a major influence on my work.
I took that palm tree and followed his advice.