Michael Sturdy

27/08/2026

"Hope." P40. Oil on canvas.

10/08/2026

"長男." Oil on canvas.

09/08/2026

03/08/2026

"Edo Village" Oil on Canvas.

01/08/2026

Inheritance of Thorns

The orchard flowered long before my mother,
Yet every branch still bent beneath her love.
She taught the roots to drink imagined fault,
Until the sap climbed quietly through the son.
Each blossom carried pollen made of pain,
And every harvest ripened to accusation.

Winter has only one enduring accusation:
It tells the tree it has betrayed its mother.
So frost disguised itself as ordinary pain,
A counterfeit that wore the scent of love.
I stretched like every faithful son,
Only to bloom into another fault.

She searched my face for one forgotten fault,
As ravens circled overhead like accusation.
No mirror ever reflected merely son;
It echoed only what was lost in mother.
She gathered broken feathers, naming them love,
While every wingbeat darkened into pain.

The river carried mountains into pain,
Though no small current authored such fault.
Still I was asked to dam the flood with love,
As though devotion silenced every accusation.
The moon kept whitening over mother,
While tide after tide erased the son.

A cracked bell cannot recognize its son;
It rings the shape of its own hidden pain.
So every echo wandered back to mother,
Returning heavier with borrowed fault.
The crows translated silence into accusation,
And called their hunger by the gentler word love.

But ivy is not guilty for the love
That crumbles ancient stone beneath the son.
The wall invents its own accusation.
Rain does not apologize for pain;
It simply falls where gravity finds fault.
Even the oldest oak must outlive mother.

When mother plants a garden watered only by love,
No son should be buried beneath another’s fault;
Let every accusation wither into leaves, and every leaf return its pain to earth.

--M. Sturdy (Aug. 1st, 2026)

26/07/2026

"Self-Portrait" Oil on canvas. (Revised Version) Sorry, no smile again. It's just too difficult to hold a smile and paint.

21/07/2026

"Mt. Asama and Kurodake." Oil on canvas.

21/07/2026

"Channeling Leonardo." Oil on canvas.