In November of 2021, Damon came to Montana. It was our first meeting face to face since our brief introduction in Spokane in 2019. After two years of collaborating from afar, we finally shared a common space. On the last day before his return to Norway we were driving home from Kalispell. It was a damp, grey, cold day. I looked out my window to a quiet, muted scene looking north across open fields, the mountains hidden by low-lying fog.

I thought, that would make a nice painting. At almost the same instant Damon said, “that looks like one of your paintings.” We had discussed my doing one last large painting, but I couldn’t decide what it should be until this experience presented my subject. A few days later, Damon sent me an email that included a comment about how I might approach the painting and what it could say about what lies ahead in life, “Such is the nature of what goes ahead of us and to an extent what we carry with us, which is to say we have ideas and perhaps even a sense of direction, though little is ever so clear.” I had my title, “Little is Ever So Clear.” This was the final painting done for our collaboration, and the only one that came from a shared moment between us. T.I.