Bog Memory by James Edward Scherbarth

Bogs preserve things. This one is keeping its own counsel.

Bog Memory is a 2019 painting by James Edward Scherbarth, in oil and cold wax medium on cradle board. Abstract works like this are made for collectors' walls, as meditations on a theme such as memory; peat bogs suit the idea, since cold, acidic, airless water slows decay almost to a stop. Here, a large, pale form of mottled green and blue-green rises from a dark ground, roughened like old copper. Rust and ochre gather across its middle in a shallow curve. Near the bottom, the color sinks into deep blue. Dark margins close in at each side. Twenty-four inches wide and 30 high.

Whatever is down there, it can wait.