Artist’s Statement: 

Uncle George was around 20 the night he lost his leg. He and three of his buddies were working in the logging camps in the remote northern woods of British Columbia  in the early 1950s.

Family folklore spoke of how all three of them were “drunk as a skunks” and it was past midnight when they decided it would be fun to cut down a giant tree. One of the men had an old gas chainsaw. Laughing and stumbling through the forest, the men picked a random tree and began to cut it down. In their alcoholic stupor, they misjudged the direction the tree was falling. My uncle never saw it coming -the mighty weight crashed onto his leg. The men managed to pull him out from under the tree and drove him in the back of the old truck down a bumpy road to the nearest town - about 30 miles away. It was past midnight when they found the doctor and woke him up to treat my uncle George. He was too drunk for anesthesia - he was told to drink more whiskey so he would pass out. The doctor amputated his leg.

I was fascinated whenever my uncle took his prosthetic leg off. He would allow me to gently play with the leg. The leg was beautiful.

Neither one of the gentlemen in this photo is my uncle. Nor is it the right era. But the gentleman wearing the horned rimmed glasses is wearing the same glasses that my uncle wore until the day he died an old man.

In  my imagination, I felt like this image of sweet nostalgia is foreshadowing a moment in time when one stupid choice - can permanently alter a life .

“In ictu oculi’ – in the blink of an eye.