That's a vivid origin — arriving in New York through that journey, carrying those stories with you. So the Hopi prophecy wasn't something you found in a book, it was told to you directly in ceremony.

The city-as-tree is a powerful translation of that — the urban form as something that grows and eventually vanishes. Looking at the image, the housing project pairs on the left feel very deliberate — did you see them as the two figures from the prophecy, or as something else?

So the composition found itself — the source photograph already had two towers, and painting extended that rhythm outward. The prophecy wasn't illustrated so much as discovered already present in the material.

The city inverted as a tree root — growing downward into the earth — is a striking formal choice. Was that inversion in the source photograph, or did you construct it?

That uncertainty — whether to paint over or leave — and then the idea arriving late in the process. And the dry brush as a practical response to an unprotected surface, not a stylistic choice from the start.

The legacy record lists the size as "md" on the site grid — but at 36 × 36 inches that's a substantial square canvas. How do you want this to read on the site — medium, large, or something else?

lg it is. This was the first work in the Art Collision series — did it set the template for the others, or did the series move somewhere different after this one?

So the series had a built-in duality — each composition existed twice, the second pass a different painterly interpretation of the same collage. Prophecy was the first of the four base compositions. What was the Art Collision group itself — what were you all trying to do with the traveling shows?

DIY before DIY was a brand — five people on the same block making it happen across two continents. That context matters for the work; it wasn't made for a gallery brief, it was made to fill a show you built yourself. How does this one sit with you now looking back — did it land the way you intended at the time, or does it read differently from here?

That's a clear through-line — the surrealism of the early oils carrying forward into this, and then the technique evolving toward the transfer paintings while the surreal quality quieted down. This sits right at that hinge point.

The oil paintings — were they already working with cities and urban material, or was that something the collage process brought in?

That's a lovely confluence — the freedom of cheap digital shooting meeting access to a large-format printer at work. The technology made the series possible as much as the ideas did.

The surrealism here — city as tree, rooted into the earth — feels closer to Magritte or early Ernst than anything from the contemporary art world. Were there painters in your head at this point, or was it more driven by the Hopi image and the material you had?

Jeff Wall makes sense here — the large lightbox prints, the way he staged urban scenes to look found, the scale that commands attention. And billboards as a visual diet while shooting — that's a different kind of collage education, reading the city as assembled image.

The shows went to Amsterdam and Holland — was this work already pointing you toward eventually moving there, or did that connection come later?

So the Holland shows were through existing connections from your time at the Utrecht school — this was already a transatlantic network before the work was even made. Where does this work live now — do you still have it, or did it sell or move on at some point?

Got it — held in San Francisco, unsold as an original.

The work was made in Fort Greene — was that your studio or just your apartment?

Home studio then — floor space, a big print, and dry brush. Looking at the work now — at the time, was there anything you were consciously moving away from? Something that felt overdone or already resolved that you didn't want this to be?

That contrast is clear — the structured institutional environment in Utrecht versus arriving in New York with a cheap digital camera and unlimited shots, making work for your own shows on your own terms. The openness of that moment is visible in the work.

You described it at the start as a tree growing out of the ground where the city is the tree itself, with pairs of project buildings to the left — and the Hopi prophecy underneath it all. Now that we've talked it through, does it still feel like that's what it is, or has something shifted?

That's a good place to leave it — a starting point that might also be a direction still open. The surreal hasn't closed, just gone quiet for a while.

That's everything I need. Let me put the confirmation draft together.

All staged. Open **Wrap up / confirm** in the sidebar — you'll see the staged fields, the description drafts, and the formal contribution assessment. Edit anything that doesn't sound right, then press **Commit** to write it to the Artworks record.