Some paintings begin with a place or a figure.

This one began with a smooth, dramatically crackled surface -and stayed there. What emerged were traces of ornament,

half-legible, like gilded writing on an ancient wall.

Arabic perhaps, or Byzantine, or something older still

-the kind of decorative fresque you find where cultures met and left their marks on the same stone. Light here lives in the reflection on the gold, as an echo from the past.

A fragment of something sacred, rescued from time.