Having committed to six months in this teeny bitty Rapperswil studio so time was my bumbling dance partner and it had taken sacrifice to make it here so I was going to play the game the best I could. The months of loneliness in Switzerland drove this work. The combination of elements; my feelings, the grid, roses, and playing cards were the subjects. Masters of the grid - I used slick odd scaled local grid paper. The blue of the grid and the grey background are close in value, the grid almost undetectable in dim light but, in reality, it is the rigid skeleton of the paper. The beauty of my days could be summed up in walking by a wall of wild roses. Oh, those poor roses revived my sanity. I wanted to love my days in the Swiss studio, but I found myself looking forward to crossing off sequential numbers on my calendar. I kept this work direct: use grid paper, steal a rose on the way to the studio, study and draw it ripping apart, deal with the cards I was dealt, watch the minutes slowly tic tic tic away.