“Childhood’s End”
I use my paint to grieve.
I use my paint to never lose you.
I use my paint to celebrate your lives.
I use my paint to see your faces again.
I use my paint to hear your laughs again.
I use my paint to force myself to remember.
I use my paint to keep you both alive in my mind.
I use my paint to bring you with me as I grow older.
I use my paint to create things that remind me of you.
I use my paint to show others how special you were to me.
I use my paint to illuminate the need for safe injection sites.
I use my paint to create portraits of you two, now that you’re gone.
I use my paint to create something for you I wish I had before you died.
I use my paint to remember when you showed me how to shotgun a beer.
I use my paint to remember when you said you’d probably try heroin, laughing.
I use my paint to remember the first time we all hung out together, dancing all night.
I use my paint to remember driving down the coast together, blasting music in my Jeep.
I use my paint to pretend that we can all still grow old and laugh about the past.
I use my paint to forget the moments when I found out you were gone forever.
I use my paint to create something permanent of you, at least for a while.
I use my paint to remember the hours we spent searching for that car.
I use my paint to show you both how much I care, wherever you are.
I use my paint to remember all the times you both were there for me.
I use my paint to remember all the times you both let me down.
I use my paint to enable you to continue to exist in this world.
I use my paint to try to forget what happened that 4th of July.
I use my paint to study every freckle on your beautiful faces.
I use my paint to tighten my grasp on my memories.
I use my paint to remember every good time.
I use my paint to remember every bad time.
I use my paint to collect memories.
I use my paint to keep you alive.
Title: “Saint Meowmixer;)”
Medium: Oil on canvas
Year: 2021
Description: This painting is of my friend Trevor York. He passed away a year ago. I painted this to canonize him. He was a wonderful person who always supported me and my art. When we were young, he talked about wanting to pursue music, and he wanted to be called “Meowmixer;)” for his DJ name. I chose this title because I wanted him to be able to name the piece himself, as much as possible.
Title: “Westdawg the Great”
Medium: Oil on canvas
Year: 2021
Description: This painting is of my friend Anthony Westphal. He passed away four years ago. I painted this to immortalize him. He was a great person. He was so incredibly smart and a joy to be around. He liked to call himself Westdawg. I chose this title because I want him to be remembered as the great person he was, and because I also wanted him to be able to name the piece himself, even though he’s not here.
Title: “I Saw The Figure 5”
Medium: Oil on canvas
Year: 2021
Description: This is a painting of a Whip-It brand butane can. It reminds me of both Trevor and Anthony. Butane has a lot of significance when I think about Trevor and Anthony. The brand Whip-It also brings up painful memories. The title of this painting is inspired by a poem by Willam Carlos Williams, titled The Great Figure.
Title: “When a Fire Starts to Burn”
Medium: Oil on canvas
Year: 2021
Description: This is a painting of a Bic lighter. Bic lighters remind me of the friends I have lost for so many reasons. My lighters used to always end up in Trevor’s pockets. Whenever we all hung out, someone always had a Bic lighter in their pocket. The title of this piece is inspired by a song the three of us used to listen to by Disclosure.
Title: “Habits”
Medium: Oil on canvas
Year: 2021
Description: This painting reminds me of the many times I spent sitting on my couch with Trevor and Anthony listening to music and talking. If we didn’t have any legal cannabis, we were always thinking of when we would get some more. If we had some, the bowl was always being packed and passed around. We didn’t worry about smoking in the same space, we never sanitized the mouthpiece before passing it to each other. We were so carefree. Trevor and Anthony never knew the world during covid. The title of this painting is inspired by a song Trevor showed me by Tove Lo and Hippie Sabotage. We all used to listen to it all the time, and the lyrics are very fitting for the memories that this painting stirs up in my mind.
Title: “Younger”
Medium: Oil on canvas
Year: 2021
Description: Santa Cruz was in my vocabulary before I ever even thought of going to UC Santa Cruz. There was always a Santa Cruz Shredder brand grinder around when Trevor, Anthony, and I were smoking legal cannabis. Trevor went to UC Santa Cruz right out of high school, while I went to community college. Trevor always told me how much everyone in Santa Cruz would love me. Once I got to Santa Cruz, there were people who knew about me just by how much Trevor talked about me all the time. Seeing Santa Cruz Shredders will always remind me of Trevor. I don’t think I would have ended up at UC Santa Cruz if Trevor hadn’t encouraged me so much. The title of this piece is inspired by the Kygo remix of a song with the same name. Trevor, Anthony, and I used to listen to it all the time.
Title: “Stay High”
Medium: Oil on canvas
Year: 2021
Description: Plastic containers for legal cannabis used to be in one of our pockets almost at all times. With all of the changes legal cannabis has gone through, these containers are not used much at all anymore. Seeing them reminds me of a time that doesn’t exist anymore, with people who are no longer here. The title of this piece is also inspired by the same song which inspired my painting “Habits.”
Title: “Let’s Mob to 15th”
Medium: Oil on canvas
Year: 2021
Description: This is a painting of Powerhouse Park in Del Mar. It is along one of the most beautiful beaches in San Diego, where I grew up. Trevor, Anthony and I used to spend time there. We always just called it “15th” because it is at the end of 15th street. This painting is like my memory of the park: the details are unclear but the defining elements such as the green grassy park and the sand pathway along the cliff are present.
Title: “First & Last”
Medium: Oil on canvas
Year: 2021
Description: This is a painting of the quad at MiraCosta college, San Elijo campus. I took my first college class with Trevor there. The first time I walked into the quad, I immediately saw him and hugged him. This quad is also the last place I saw Anthony before he passed. I ran up to him and gave him a big hug, but we were both in a rush to get to our classes so we couldn’t talk for long before we said our goodbyes. I didn’t know then it would be our final goodbye.
Title: “Take it One Deeper”
Medium: Oil on canvas
Year: 2021
Description: This is a depiction of one of the friendship bracelets that I made as a part of a set of four for me, Trevor, Anthony, and our other close friend. We all loved to dance to deep house music together, and the words on our matching bracelets were chosen because of our favorite inside joke about deep house. I have carried my friendship bracelet with me ever since I made them. When I see it, I am reminded that only two of us who had these bracelets are still alive. Looking at my bracelet makes me wonder where Anthony and Trevor’s bracelets ended up. Seeing them when they wore the bracelets made me feel happy; I was so honored that they loved them enough to wear them. I am happy I made something to show how much their friendship meant to me while they were still alive.