From the archive, I recently decided to part with this little painting from 2004, an especially good example of my long obsession with modernizing the Trompe l’Oeil Still Life, French for “fools the eye.” I was primarily interested in creating a sense of peaceful balance in this composition nodding to the Chinese Yin-Yang symbol, which describes opposite but interconnected forces. This is especially appropriate here, where I am literally contrasting whole cherries with their remains (the pits) and less obviously juxtaposing illusionistic realism with flat, decorative treatments. Those who follow my work will know that this tension is at the core of nearly all of my work over the last twenty years, and this painting represents an early iteration of that theme.