Oldman's Story

"They call you heartless: but you have a heart, and I love you for being ashamed to show it. You are ahsamed of your flood, while others are ashamed of thier ebb." - Nietzsche

Four paintings, running in a counter clockwise direction help tell the story in the middle.

His story...

…An old man in a white house with too many windows. Stood and watched, year after year, a tree older and taller shedding its leaves at fall, and bringing them back in the spring. Days that go by, years that don’t change, he watches the cycle continue. The driveway gets longer and the steps get harder. His work ends, and now he sits and watches. Dead leaves fall on his green lawn, the only thing left that needs his attention. He rakes them, and hides them, in the back, some of them brilliant red others just wet, limp and brown. Years before he would have burned them, he would not have thought of anything else. Now he wishes they could spring back to life, his leg aches, it’s colder then it ever was. He sits again, staring at his bare tree; he thinks, he wonders. Soon he is standing, his leg aches, but he does not think of it anymore, he wonders if his fingers will tie the knots; he wonders how long he will be able to do it.

His house...

His tree...

His leaves...