STOP

I am seeing a lot to paint in my neighborhood--all the undiscovered relationships between trees, houses, and sidewalks, and even trees with stop signs. It occurred to me that the tree was not complete without its connection to the stop sign. The angle doesn't matter, these two elements are connected.

The only reason that this is important is that a couple of years ago I painted several Home Portraits and was asked to remove the big tree in the painting so the front of the house could be viewed with the glory of the front garden displayed. No one had ever witnessed this perspective of the particular house, so the painting looked wrong, despite winter reference photos and cast shadows from the aborted tree. So I guess relationship matters even to stop signs and their tree buddies. I confess that I tried to leave the stop sign out, but, well, something stopped me.