I used walnut stain and a mineral pigment to create this piece on recycled cardboard. The Japanese poet Iida Ryûta wrote: “Winter deepens / Just as deepens / A father’s love.” My work is inspired by this haiku. What we see is a “triptych” on raw cardboard—a humble, rough, unadorned material—arranged from left to right as a progression from black to white, from night to light. The haiku is a simple, stripped-down form, devoid of ornamentation. Painting on industrial cardboard—a transient, ordinary material—is to choose the same rejection of refinement. The truth of winter, and of paternal love, does not require a beautiful medium.