When I first started doing still life arrangements in school I found that I really disliked them. There was no action, no human element. You had to slave away on trinkets and odds 'n ends. Then I learned a bit about the Dutch still life painters, and I felt an unexpected feeling of kinship with them. This painting was the result of that discovery. My professor thought I had gone mad painting a still life. I had been doing more "abstract" (aka crap) at the time and this came out of no where.