"Save the Cows"
2ftx3ft
Acrylic On Canvas
2025
I started this painting 2 weeks before I made the decision to stop us in hard drugs and alcohol. I worked on it for round 7 months. In this time, I redid the aliens face 3 separate times. While I was making this painting, I often felt like I was not only sculpting her face, but I was sculpting myself into the person I wanted to be. I spent many of the hours that I worked in this painting remembering my past, and realizing why I am who I am. I spent 15 years of my life being consumed by my addiction to drugs and alcohol, and I think the only reason I was able to get sober was the legalization of Marijauna in Minnesota. During the time I was using drugs, I was actively involved in illegal activity and "the black market," mostly to fund my addiction. I often felt stuck in this life style, like it was the only option I had. I am medically diagnosed with PTSD, and I believe I used substances for so long to cope with the memories of my childhood growing up with an abusive mother, later to be put into foster care until I was emancipated. I often suffer episodes of psychosis, or what people call "flashbacks." This is not something that happens to me because I choose for it to mentally, it is something that happens because my trauma is stored within my body. Marijuana stops these episodes completely. The legalization of Marijauna allows me to get this medicine outside of the black market, and opened up a whole new world for me. It opened up a world where I can live as a normal person, above the black market that exists under regular society.
"Existential Crisis"
3ftx4ft
Acrylic on Canvas
2022
In the STEM science community, it is generally accepted that humans as we know them are a result of evolution. The thing that no one can agree on, is why our species evolved the way that it did. Some biologists believe that we developed intelligence as a result of females selecting mates with the most reasoning skills, to keep their families out of danger. While I think this is the most likely theory, some people believe other things. Some people believe that aliens injected our primate ancestors with their own DNA, causing us to develop intelligence. Another one of my personal favorites is a theory dubbed, "The Stoned Ape Theory," by Terrance McKenna. He believed that our primate ancestors ate psychedelic mushrooms, causing them to develop intelligence. Regardless of what the truth is, this is something that has always fascinated me, so I made a painting about it.
