Oh man, I really thought I had an early photo of this somewhere! Guess not.

I really hated this painting the entire time I was making it! It thoroughly sucked the whole time, all the way until the last second, where everything came together and is now one of my favorite paintings I've ever done.

Like most paintings, I didn't know where this was going. I just kept throwing down lines of oil pastel until I got this uncanny hybrid of a victorian mansion and a sickly frog. The haggard state of the amphibian bummed me out every time I looked at it. Was it a reflection of my own internal state? Little by little I added warmth and color, giving our friend health. The texture was added by squeezing fabric paint, like adding mustard to a hot dawg. The writing in the negative space is nonsensical, more like vocalizing. I think that's called asemic writing? I speak a little bit of Japanese and a little bit of French, but neither particularly well. はとした (hatoshita) and machellement don't mean anything. Likewise, none of the Kanji at the top are actual Kanji, but they all contain components of real Kanji.

I gave this painting to my friend Erik as a parting gift when he left Philly in 2022. As hard as it was seeing my friend leave, it was also hard to give away this painting. That's how I knew it was a good gift!