Ultimate freedom in a place of ultimate restriction... that is what spoke to me as I painted this scene on a trip to San Fransisco. Alcatraz is closed now of course, the decaying buildings and grounds are open only to curious tourists. Walking through this compound and its buildings, I could feel the suffering in that desolate place of ultimate restriction. As my eye wandered over the buildings with their rusted metal roofs, it stopped on one of the peaks where a seagull was resting. The irony of that bird, with the complete freedom to come and go at will, was profound to me.