For Emily Pettigrew, a ghost is a somewhat amusing container for the weight of past time. Working from her studio in the Catskill Mountains, she places quiet figures into painted scenes evoking the multiple pasts layered beneath the present. With signature restraint, Pettigrew aims for, in her words, "the removal of excess parts—a paring down to an image’s most beautiful elements."

This small painting on paper renders water, shoreline, and trees in close hues of black and blue, with an apparition floating by and a narrative alluded to in the work's title. The scene connects closely to Pettigrew's ongoing interest in exploring what philosophers call the growing block universe—the idea that past moments don't disappear, but accumulate, becoming part of a permanent, ever-thickening reality.