Some decisions don't arrive quietly.
This one came like a door thrown open. The decision to stop performing a version of myself designed for other people's comfort. To want what I want without the footnotes. To say no without the paragraph of explanation that follows. To take up space without apology.
The full title is My Give A Fucks Are On Vacation. It is listed here as On Vacation for the people who need it abbreviated. The feeling it describes needs no abbreviation.
At 40"×40", it is a square and unapologetic presence. It lives well in rooms that can handle a little electricity.
On Vacation is the most openly joyful surface in the Wild collection and also its most structurally complex. The painting operates on three distinct registers simultaneously. A broad horizontal ground of blue-grey and lavender was laid first, structural and relatively calm. Over it, large flat strokes of lemon yellow established a second layer, expansive and unhurried. Then a brighter, more saturated yellow arrived in looping gestural lines applied with full pressure, moving across the entire canvas without deference to the structure beneath it, including visible drips where the paint was loaded enough to run. Payne's Grey marks in a smaller brush move through the composition in fast calligraphic curves, not containing the yellow but responding to it. The navy blocks at the corners are the painting's only deliberate anchors, more considered than everything above them, and their solidity makes the freedom of the central field legible by contrast. Scratches pulled through wet paint reveal earlier layers in thin white lines, a record of the hand moving through the surface rather than across it. The formal argument of this painting is that liberation is not empty. It has structure, history, and layers. It simply refuses to be governed by them.
From the Wild collection, 2024.
From the artist's journal:
"I made the decision to be fully myself, to do the things I want to do, to say no to the people and things I no longer want in my world. Without shame. Free."
Some decisions don't arrive quietly.
This one came like a door thrown open. The decision to stop performing a version of myself designed for other people's comfort. To want what I want without the footnotes. To say no without the paragraph of explanation that follows. To take up space without apology.
The full title is My Give A Fucks Are On Vacation. It is listed here as On Vacation for the people who need it abbreviated. The feeling it describes needs no abbreviation.
At 40"×40", it is a square and unapologetic presence. It lives well in rooms that can handle a little electricity.
On Vacation is the most openly joyful surface in the Wild collection and also its most structurally complex. The painting operates on three distinct registers simultaneously. A broad horizontal ground of blue-grey and lavender was laid first, structural and relatively calm. Over it, large flat strokes of lemon yellow established a second layer, expansive and unhurried. Then a brighter, more saturated yellow arrived in looping gestural lines applied with full pressure, moving across the entire canvas without deference to the structure beneath it, including visible drips where the paint was loaded enough to run. Payne's Grey marks in a smaller brush move through the composition in fast calligraphic curves, not containing the yellow but responding to it. The navy blocks at the corners are the painting's only deliberate anchors, more considered than everything above them, and their solidity makes the freedom of the central field legible by contrast. Scratches pulled through wet paint reveal earlier layers in thin white lines, a record of the hand moving through the surface rather than across it. The formal argument of this painting is that liberation is not empty. It has structure, history, and layers. It simply refuses to be governed by them.
From the Wild collection, 2024.
From the artist's journal:
"I made the decision to be fully myself, to do the things I want to do, to say no to the people and things I no longer want in my world. Without shame. Free."
