Two weeks before I painted this piece, the phrase "hope deferred" kept going through my head. I was feeling discouraged about some things and I was in my studio working on another piece when the phrase popped in my head again. I decided to start a completely new piece with that phrase in mind. If you look closely, you can see the top of the tree in the sky area and the trunk coming from the ground. I felt like this painting was an illustration of the proverb, "Hope deferred makes a heart sick, but a longing fullfilled is a tree of life." Unconsciously and by accident, I painted a tree of life in the distance. I'd like to think I'm on a highway headed towards my tree of life.