Months ago I could feel doubt trying to creep into my thoughts about my passion for art. Doubt is usually this little voice squeaking in your head that tells you why something isn’t going to work. It has an amazing way of giving you every reason that something is a “bad idea” or “isn’t safe or usually done that way.” It’s with this small quiet voice that doubt has so much power. Finally I knew I needed to create a piece to visualize doubt and be able to move past it. I have always had to visualize things a certain way before I could move on. Now that I’ve embraced painting, it’s allowing me to put that vision into a solid form to be remembered and studied. So I went to work on creating,”The Tree of Doubt.” The East Oregonian Newspaper mentioned this painting recently. Here’s a link to the article
Living with doubt is not an option if you want to move forward with anything.
Everything you see in the painting is done for a specific reason. The colors ans shapes I picked for very particular reasons and the shape of the tree is very particular of course to explain the shape do doubt. I don’t like to explain away my pieces by filling in all the blanks and laying out all the info like a technical manual. What I will do is give some information about it and leave the rest to the viewer. Notice that the branches on the tree all aim down and in slightly. That’s because doubt doesn’t let you grow up or out, only down and in to make a person collapse upon themselves. Notice that the base is very small and the roots are hardly there. That’s because doubt keeps you from growing roots as well. You’ll also notice that the tree is tilted slightly as well, almost like the tree is going to fall over. “That’s where doubt always keeps you!!!” Doubt is what leads people to “Exist” and not LIVE! It is merciless in the way it takes a hold of a person and it never wants to surrender. So remember that you can’t make doubt surrender, instead you have to “KILL” doubt! You must resolve yourself to never listening to it and being a destroyer of any doubt that enters your life and the lives of those immediately around you. If you don’t take this approach, a small seed of doubt will start to grow and enter into the Kingdom of your heart and mind again. Doubt, fear, and everything like them are more powerful than we realize. Once I finished this piece I could feel the life in doubt fading away and no longer remaining. I hope that is how anyone that looks at this piece feels and acts after looking at this piece. It might take time to conquer doubt, but it is totally necessary to move forward in life.
I love making paintings that glow in the dark and that take on a new life under black light.
Thank you all so much for your time 
Any questions or comments please feel free and encouraged to send them.
Thanks again, Rosco “Carrico” Crooke