Rural Missouri is incredibly beautiful. Without mountains, oceans, deep canyons, towering trees, or raging rivers, it is beautiful in its plainness. It’s deep winter. Bare trees against sky, dry grass one day snow another, bird song, horses grazing, freezing temperatures and neighbors waving. I am spending three weeks here working on a set of drawings about my father. I carry the deaths of 6 million in my regular work, but these three weeks are reserved for a deep, intimate reflection on one man’s death. I did not realize that making portraits of the familiar dead can bring them back to life.