Dark Night Cactus

DARK NIGHT CACTUS
In the middle of a period already heavy with illness and difficulty, a close friend died. Suddenly. Without warning. A confidant, a support — the person who had made possible the studio where every painting in this collection was born.
For months, there was no way to hold it.
When grief arrives on top of everything else that is already too much, something instinctive happens. We don't choose it. The body makes the decision before the mind has any say. We become harder. We grow spines. Not because we want to keep the world out, but because we learned, in a season that offered very little mercy, that this was the only way to survive until something changed.
But a cactus still blooms.
That is the truth this painting insists on — the one that took time to understand and longer still to paint. A radiant green form rises from a ground of gold and green, decorated with flowers and fluorescent pink dots against an infinite black speckled with stars. Armoured and beautiful simultaneously. Solitary but not defeated. Turned, always, toward the light it cannot always see.
The technique carries the history of where this practice began — acrylic and gesso and washi tape and Posca markers and stickers, the materials of an artist who built his visual language from everything available, refusing to wait for permission or perfect conditions. Because that too is part of what the friend left behind: the space to create, and with it the understanding that creating is itself the answer. That every mark made in that studio is a form of remembrance.
In the darkest nights, there are stars. This painting knows exactly where to look.
50.5 × 76.5 cm · Acrylic, glue, gesso, washi tape, Posca markers and stickers on canvas panel · 2023 · One of a kind Unframed. Signed on the front and on the reverse. Certificate of Authenticity included.