This painting was inspired by the Aaron Copland interview and photo in The Unguarded Moment: A Photographic Interpretation by Frederick Plaut, 1964 (Prentice-Hall: Englewood Cliffs). Copland writes:

"The reason for the compulsion to renewed creativity, it seems to me, is that each added work brings with it an element of self-discovery. I must create in order to know myself, and since self-knowledge is a never-ending search, each new work is only part answer to the question, 'Who am I ?' and brings with it the need to go on to other and different part-answers....each new and significant work of art is a unique formulation of experience--an experience that would be utterly lost if it were not captured by the artist. No other artist will ever make that particular formulation in exactly that way. And just as the individual creator discovers himself through his creation, so the world at large knows itself through its artists, discovers the very nature of its Being through the creation of its artists."