I was looking for a title for this painting, something about bones, claiming bones, and I found a conversation in a gaming forum regarding a Japanese game. The chat was about the meaning of a phrase (translated from Japanese) “yield my flesh to claim their bones” used by a character in the game. This phrase means, in essence, sometimes a battle must be lost to win the war. I made this painting feeling depressed and disheartened by the grotesque losses we are facing in our country, from social safety nets, to legal rights, to environmental protections. I wanted to create an image which symbolized rising up, like a phoenix, to "claim the bones," or be ultimately victorious, against the people, systems and agencies responsible for these losses. I chose a California Condor as the bird because condors are huge, heroic and have themselves risen up from near extinction.