**Artist's Note: This painting is one of many I have asked my friends and relations to store so I can maximize my studio storage space. What's curious to me is that this friend had a house-sitter who slept in the room where this painting was hung and called asking to sleep in another room.

I, however, am not disturbed by this painting. At the time this work was painted, I felt that close personal relationships are a constant effort of give-and-take. Compromises. And that perhaps too often I found myself making concessions when I didn't want to and yet I remained tied. Each of us together bound by an agreement and yet now, perhaps we were like two trees planted too close together and neither of us were able to get what we needed.

** This piece has been chosen to appear in The Renascent Painting Book, Autumn 2005 Edition.