This was initially commissioned for a Christian magazine, for an article called "Reaching for God's Smile." I wanted it to deal with spirituality, without being specific. A lot of my recent work had dealt with hands. It's such a complex form, and yet, I think, an elegant form.

These hands have a kind of calming effect. I do illustrations for business publications: it's conceptual, it hits the mark, but it doesn't really evoke a feeling. This was different. I've mixed these colors a million times, but this time I felt I really hit the values right, and it added a calmness and spiritual aspect to the piece. I was trying to have it speak to someone's soul, not really relating it to any one dogma.

I originally illustrated this piece for a good friend, Peter Cusack. We met in Syracuse, through the Independent Study Degree Program. He's the art director/illustrator for a small press, and he had always talked to me about illustrating a cover. In this case, it was for a book of poems called, Through a Gate of Trees.

I was still in the Syracuse program and living in the San Francisco Bay area. There's a Bay area arborist who took different trees and grafted them together to make intricate patterns. Really cool stuff. Some of the patterns reminded me of cathedrals. They almost speak to you on a spiritual level. So I took that idea. I wanted to illustrate someone looking within, digging really deep.