Painted in June 1982. It’s hard to make it beyond the landing of the second floor into the actual galleries, because an excruciatingly ordinary painting on the wall demands attention. It’s a curious still life of a harmless house finch alighted on a table beside a pot of generous geraniums. Not far away on the table, a foot or so perhaps, just on the other side of the flowerpot that centers the picture, lies a green, fan-shaped leaf that has dropped a foot or so from its tendril to the table. The compositional relationship between the bird, the plant, and the fallen leaf speaks concisely and subtly to the spiritual relationship—the trick is to look at the picture long enough to hear it. The bird, as fickle as the bull is stubborn, looks mysteriously attracted to the fallen leaf—approximately as much so as the pregnant girl is to the miraculously accessible stork. Nature, suggests York in these narrative pictures, provides peace and prosperity, if it’s domesticated by a farmer or a painter. It’s nice not to be roaming an exhibit of shallow feeling, clumsy craft, and strident iconography, and a privilege to be able, at the top of these stairs, to turn either left or right. ....The paintings’ plainspoken titles speak for themselves, and for the painter—the kind who agonizes over his muted palette to say something quiet in concrete terms. It’s old-fashioned, figurative painting at its frumpy, substantial best. – Scott Ruescher (http://artseditor.com/site/domesticated-nature/)