Backyard and Beyond

This is a large piece I did quite a while ago. It made it into an exhibition at a local gallery that is also a theatre and house to many other events. The exhibition was made up only of drawings. Mine did not get any place. I wasn't there at the opening reception but one night I went there to see the drawings and there was this older man on his way out and he stopped at the receptionist's desk to give her a piece of his mind: "Why do you people always have this homo stuff here?" You could hear the salutary anger in his voice. The receptionist gives me one of those smug lifting of the eyebrows look after the man had left, as though we both were supposed to silently agree with one another about how outdated or unenlightened or whatever that man was. I blocked it and simply asked where the exhibit was. She told me, and I went, and sure enough, the picture that got first place was the most unremarkable piece of nothing with the title: "The Hole in August". Not august the month. One of the finest pieces there was small circular piece, with a circle frame, of a complexly woven celtic cross, done ever so delicately in pencil. It was jammed into the most non-prominent corner in the place.

The title of my piece is, "Backyard and Beyond". It depicts the last sliver of my parents' backyard, and obviously beyond it. The width of the backyard was significantly conflated in the drawing. (Click on the first one to enlarge)