On the strange and wonderful human habit of collecting things that matter for absolutely no reason.
I came across something recently that made me laugh out loud. It was a little passage about how, despite all of humanity's incredible accomplishments, we still can't resist picking up a good rock. 
We've sent people to the moon. We've invented artificial intelligence. We've mapped the human genome, built skyscrapers, and created computers that fit in our pockets. Yet somewhere deep inside our very sophisticated brains, there is still a little voice that says, "Ohhhh, look at that one. It's got a stripe!"
And into the pocket it goes.
I love this about humans.
I love that we can spend our days worrying about mortgages, politics, deadlines, and the endless complications of modern life, and then have all of that interrupted by a particularly beautiful stone sitting on the ground.
It's such a wonderfully uncomplicated moment of joy.
I have a rock.
Actually, I have a lot of rocks. An unreasonable number of rocks, probably. But there is one in particular that has been with me for decades.
It's a smooth, rounded stone with beautiful dark stripes running across its surface. Nothing particularly valuable about it. It's not a gemstone. It's not rare, at least as far as I know. It has no monetary significance whatsoever.
But I love this rock.
I've carried it around for years, moved it from place to place, held it in my hand countless times, and painted it more times than I can remember. It has appeared in painting after painting, often tucked into one of my precariously balanced towers of stones.
Somewhere along the way, this little striped rock became part of my artistic vocabulary. I can recognize it immediately, even among dozens of other painted stones. It's almost like an old friend who keeps showing up in different stories.
And the funny thing is, I couldn't tell you exactly why this particular rock became so important to me.
I just liked it.
And apparently, that was enough.
The Art of Picking Things Up
I think artists are particularly susceptible to this sort of behavior.
We collect things. Interesting sticks. Feathers. Shells. Old photographs. Rusty pieces of metal. Strange little objects that most people would walk right past.
We see something in them that makes us stop.
Sometimes it's the color. Sometimes it's the shape. Sometimes it's the way light catches a surface or how something feels in our hands.
And sometimes there's no explanation at all.
I've always been fascinated by the idea that an object can be completely ordinary until someone decides to pay attention to it. A stone on the beach is just a stone on the beach. But pick it up, carry it home, put it on your windowsill, and suddenly it becomes your stone.
Give it twenty years and a few memories, and it becomes something else entirely.
It becomes a little piece of your history.
I think that's part of what art does, too. It asks us to stop and look at something long enough for it to become meaningful.
A Little Tower of Meaning
Over the years, I've painted countless stacks of rocks, sometimes balanced in ways that seem almost impossible. I love the tension of these compositions, the idea that a collection of heavy, ordinary objects can somehow become something delicate and improbable.
There's something reassuring about balance, particularly in a world that often feels anything but balanced.
Each stone is different. Each one has its own weight, shape, color, and personality. Some are beautiful. Some are awkward. Some look as though they have no business being part of the tower at all.
But together, they work.
And often, somewhere in the stack, you'll find my striped rock.
I like that it keeps finding its way into my paintings. It's a tiny personal detail, something that might mean absolutely nothing to the person looking at the finished work, but means a great deal to me.
Maybe that's one of the most wonderful things about making art. We get to hide little pieces of ourselves inside the things we create.
Why Do We Keep Them?
I've often wondered why humans are so drawn to collecting stones.
Children seem to understand it instinctively. Take a child to the beach and there's a good chance you'll come home with pockets full of rocks. Not necessarily the prettiest rocks, either. Sometimes the most prized possession is a completely unremarkable brown pebble.
But to that child, it's perfect.
And really, who's to say it isn't?
I think we spend a lot of our adult lives learning to assign value to things based on what they cost, what they're worth, or what they can do for us.
Rocks don't really participate in that system.
A good rock doesn't need to be useful. It doesn't need to match the furniture. It doesn't need to appreciate in value or justify the space it occupies.
It just needs to make you happy.
There's something wonderfully rebellious about that.
And perhaps that's why we keep them. A stone from a beach vacation can bring back an entire afternoon. A pebble from a hike can remind us of someone we were walking with. A rock from a place we love can become a tiny, tangible connection to somewhere far away.
The stone hasn't changed.
We have.
Civilization Has Failed to Defeat Rock
At our gallery, we even have a table where visitors can stack stones. People of all ages stop to play with them, rearranging the rocks, balancing one on another, and trying to create something that seems to defy gravity.
It's one of my favorite things to watch.
Someone can walk into a gallery filled with paintings that took hundreds of hours to create, and still find themselves completely absorbed in balancing three rocks on top of each other.
And I don't find that insulting in the slightest.
I find it beautiful.
There's no instruction manual. No right answer. No complicated technology. Just a few stones and the simple pleasure of making something.
Maybe that's the whole point.
We are complicated creatures living in an increasingly complicated world, but our capacity for wonder remains remarkably simple.
We still love a good sunset. We still stare at the moon. We still pick up seashells, watch clouds, and stop to admire a particularly interesting rock.
And I hope we never stop.
As for my striped rock, I suspect I'll keep carrying it around and painting it for as long as I'm able. Perhaps one day someone will inherit it and wonder why on earth I kept such an ordinary little stone for so many years.
I hope they'll turn it over in their hand, notice those beautiful stripes, and understand.
Or better yet, I hope they'll say, "Holy shit, this one has a stripe."
And into their pocket it goes.
