Duren communicates in "nature," man's first tongue. Wind, breeze, water, sun; spoken by nature, and composed on canvas by Duren, this, he reminds us, is our forgotten language.

The translation is a surreal experience, contained within the immensity of reality. Duren's brush has taken the language of "nature," and painted it at one moment into a vespers chant, and the next moment, into a bar from the blues. It is music for our eyes. The landscape he paints gazes back its Mona Lisa smile.

T.S. Elliot has written, "It is the journey, not the arrival that matters." So we "climb fences" with Stephen Duren, as his brush journeys over space made place, and he creates one, then another mysterious and divine self-portrait of the land.