Filmed under lower light to better show the symbol’s luminosity.
Archive: DHPW-2026-041
Artist: Dave Holt
Year: 2026
Medium: Acrylic on raw petrified wood
Dimensions: approx. 4¼ × 3 × 2¼ in. (10.8 × 7.6 × 5.7 cm)
Weight: 2.1 lb (0.95 kg)
Origin: Northern Arizona
Geological age: Late Triassic, approximately 200+ million years old
About the Work
This work begins with an unusually architectural piece of petrified wood. Deep fractures divide the object into projecting blocks, recessed channels, stepped edges, and exposed mineral layers. The painted symbol occupies only one concentrated face, leaving much of the geological structure untouched and visually dominant. Gold, blue, turquoise, copper, black, and the isolated red point create a dense field of lines, repeated marks, geometric forms, and luminous accents that moves across, and is repeatedly interrupted by, the fractured surface.
The relationship between symbol and object changes substantially as the piece is turned. From some viewpoints the painted field is prominent; from others it nearly disappears and the petrified wood becomes the entire experience. The symbol has no assigned translation or fixed meaning. Rather than resolving into a narrative, it remains an open structure encountered alongside the wood’s own record of deep time, rupture, mineralization, and transformation. The work asks to be experienced as a three-dimensional object rather than a single painted image: geological history and contemporary human mark occupying the same physical form without either completely explaining the other.
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$675
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