D.L.A.T.Y.Y.C.K.Y.Y.T.C.

June 4, 2026

D.L.A.T.Y.Y.C.K.Y.Y.T.C. | 5-24-2026 | acrylics and pigment ink on canvas | 24 x 30 in

I thought I’d be living at Tranquil Shores for at least another two months but when I went into the clinical office that morning, I found out I only had ten days before my discharge.

I felt shattered. Caught completely off-guard. I walked back to the residential property alone and remembered a conversation I’d had with my sister 18 months earlier.

I’d just been released from the hospital, following an attempted overdose. “You can’t kill yourself, Sam. That’s so selfish,” she told me.

Fuck you, I thought. “You know what’s really selfish, Racey? Expecting me to endure this kind of pain every day – to keep on with this shitty, empty life – devoid of any happiness whatsoever – so that you can call me on the phone two or three times a year.”

You wouldn’t be reading this right now if my life hadn’t EVENTUALLY IMPROVED, but – back then – my life hurt. Every day was painful. I felt isolated, hopelessly addicted to heroin, and lost. I could see no way out. It didn’t have to be that way, but I didn’t yet have the emotional tools I needed to do anything about it. 

While I managed to turn my life around, some people suffer for decades on end. And as bitter and angry as I was when Racey said that to me, I’m still not sure we owe it to anyone else to stay stuck in a life like that.

That said – unless you’re in chronic pain or suffering from debilitating, UNABATING mental illness, you probably shouldn’t kill yourself. Not unless you’ve exhausted ALL other options. Because – as dark and miserable as life can be (and BELIEVE ME, I KNOW), it can also be pretty great.

If you’re truly ready to die, truly ready to give up on everything, then you’ve got nothing left to lose. So – before you kill yourself – lose it. Blow up your life before ending it. Choose uncertainty over unhappiness. Suicide is usually the consequence of feeling trapped. But you’re not trapped.

End the relationship. Quit your job. Break the lease. Disconnect your phone. Move across the country. Do whatever it takes to get out of your rut.

In my admittedly limited experience, when I make choices that demonstrate love (for myself and for others), things have a way of working out.

If all of this sounds impossible, I assure you: it’s easier than you think. If it sounds terrifying, do it anyway.

Worst case scenario: you were right, nothing gets better, and suicide is still an option.

DON’T LET ANYONE TELL YOU OTHERWISE.

But it’s not a very good option.

Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

This painting is what I call an UPCYCLE. I took the concept from one of my very early paintings and used it for this new one. The one I’m working on now is gonna be another one.

ON A RELATED NOTE, I’ve got three fairly recent paintings that I decided weren’t quite good enough. They were CLOSE but not quite. In the past, I believed in leaving each painting as a snapshot of where I was at right when I made it. Fuck that. I don’t wanna hang or sell something I’m not 100% proud of and happy with. So I went back to work on those three paintings and now I’m even more excited about them than I was when they were brand new.

DLATYYCKYYTC is so titled as a nod to IYDKMRNIGE. I can rattle off either acronym LIKE IT’S NOTHIN’. (Yes, I’ve practiced).

Why Do Bad Things Happen to Bad People?

May 19, 2026

Bad People | 5/14/26 | acrylic paint, staples, and safety pins on the charred remains of a painting destroyed by fire | 24 x 30 in

My RV, filled with art, burnt down in February. A friend joked: “HOW MUCH PERSONAL LORE CAN ONE PERSON DEVELOP?”

The fire was devastating but bad stuff happens to me a lot, so I’m WELL-TRAINED for this sorta thing. I’ve got TRAUMA EXPERIENCE. 

Bad People is painted over the charred remains of Whole Wide World.

I haven’t always come out on top and sometimes it’s taken me years to recover, but the fire didn’t beat me. I was back on the road doing art shows that week.

In March, I was invited to some art fairs that were still 7 months away and given the option to pay the full registration cost or just a deposit. I’d have preferred to just pay in full and be done with it but I was scared.

WHO KNOWS IF I’LL EVEN MAKE IT THAT FAR? Maybe I won’t be making art by then. Maybe I’ll have lost everything. Maybe my life will be some kind of fucked up I can’t even predict. 

I don’t really think that – I’m doing well lately and I feel SOLID AS FUCK. But it also feels a little myopic(?) to ignore my history. To not acknowledge it makes me feel self-conscious – like I’m failing to recognize what EVERYONE ELSE IS PROBABLY THINKING: “This won’t last. Sam can’t keep it together.”

Growing up, I never made it more than three years at one school. Same (to this day) with homes. And I’ve never held a job for even three months. (NOT THAT I WANT ONE).

I don’t even like to mention it anymore because I’m tired of it being such a big part of my identity but – until now – I’d never even made it two years off heroin (or fentanyl).

I’m extremely bright, extremely competent, and extremely UNSTABLE. 

I could do ANYTHING – except for that instability. It’s made me kind of a fucking loser. At least at times. My life’s a lot of very impressive accomplishments and a lot of really pathetic, wasted years.

I’m self-absorbed. I think I’m sorta naturally inconsiderate. I’m prone to arrogance and kinda entitled. But I’m also sensitive, empathetic. I think I usually do the right thing, even if it’s not always my first instinct. 

I don’t think I’m a bad person but does anyone really? I do think I’m sometimes bad at being a person. But I’m getting better. I’m trying anyway.

Related work:

Before the fire, this painting was The Whole Wide World Can Suck My Dick (but, like, in a Fun Way).

Before I transformed Wide World into Bad People, I made an entirely new painting (Fruit of the Poisonous Me) all about my experience of the fire.

I’d initially planned to do an entire series of new work on the charred remains of the paintings I lost in the fire. After processing everything through Fruit though – and now having done Bad People – I’m feeling like I’m sort of “over the fire” and ready to just move on. I still have those damaged paintings in storage though; maybe I’ll like the idea again by the time I get back to Florida. TIME WILL TELL.

Bad People sold on May 17, 2026. I’ve made prints but likely won’t add them to the webstore because I’m not sure I want the webstore to exist anymore. If you’d like one, your best bet is to COME FIND ME.

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NOTHING MATTRESS

April 27, 2026

NOTHING MATTRESS | 4/26/26 | acrylics and pigment ink on canvas | 24 x 12 in

Following Luckiest and Fruit, I was happy to paint something that would mostly just be fun. I’d recently learned that the ivermectin people ate for covid was a paste that often came in flavors for horses. So– in the face of death– Americans consumed APPLE-FLAVORED HORSE PASTE, in the hope thatthat could save them. This delighted me endlessly but, like most things by which I’m thoroughly amused, it gets very sad if you think about it too much. Yes, it’s stupid but also bleak.

BUT THAT’S NOT HOW I CHOOSE TO THINK ABOUT IT.

As I wrote on the canvas: LET THEM EAT CAKE APPLE-FLAVORED HORSE PASTE.

That’s where the painting started. But then Amanda had to go and have a fucking aneurysm. Actually three (but only one that ruptured). Suddenly, one of my very best friends was quite possibly going to die.

After a morning of updates and crying, I decided I needed to keep busy. It wasn’t long before I had a thought that felt really cold:

It’s fine. Amanda can die. NOTHING MATTERS.

As I reasoned in the moment: for whom do I want Amanda to live? Maybe wanting her to survive is just me being selfish. Surviving the aneurysm could mean a life of diminished brain function, frustration, and confusion. Death, on the other hand, is clean. Once she’s dead, all issues are null and void. She’s fine. Maybe moreso than anyone still living. 

Death is painful for those left behind, but we all die eventually and “if it doesn’t matter now, then it never really did.” So what’s that pain worth?

When I got back to the painting, in between “it’s okay I stole this title” and “NOTHING MATTRESS,” I wrote “Panda’s brains are broken.” But then:

It just occurred to me: by the time this painting is done, I might have to replace “brains are broken” with “DEAD.”

Even for me, that’s dark. And despite my earlier, colder assessment, it was deeply upsetting. I can intellectually reason my way to nihilism but that’s a coping mechanism. As I’d journaled on that first day:

I really, really want her to be okay. I want to talk to her and laugh about how scared I was.

I got to do that about a week later and I’m happy to report that – at least as of today – Amanda is still alive and doing as well as can be expected under the circumstances. We’re optimistic about a full (or near full) recovery.

Maybe none of our pain or our lives are objectively worth anything. Maybe they don’t matter.

But they matter to me.

I guess I just love the taste of nihilism-flavored horse paste. 

AS NOTED, I stole this title. “Nothing Mattress” was a really cool comic and zine by Brian Connolly. When I found out other people were stealing “nothing mattress” (knowingly or otherwise) for other projects, I decided it was fair game. Especially since (1) NOTHING MATTERS and (2) I could use this statement as a corrective to let the world know that – regardless of where you first saw it – CREDIT GOES TO BRIAN. Or at least I think it does. I don’t know him but he was certainly the first to publicize the phrase at all. Either way, you should check out NOTHING MATTRESS by Brian Connolly.

It was suggested to me that I was the right person to launch a GoFundMe for Amanda and it was HARD FOR ME TO ARGUE OTHERWISE, so that’s what I did. At the time of this update, the campaign is still running. Make a donation or share it if you’re so inclined.

Oh – and if you buy one of these prints, write “Amanda” in the notes and I’ll donate the proceeds (in your name) to the fundraiser. For availability of the original painting or giclées, send a message.

Fruit of the Poisonous Me

April 16, 2026

Fruit of the Poisonous Me | 13 April 2026 | acrylics and pigment ink on canvas | 40 x 60 in

January started well enough and then the ice storm canceled three events I’d booked in North Carolina. My next show was back in Florida. “Why’d I even leave?”

I decided to visit my brother in Durham.

February 1st – the night it happened, I was downstairs, gathering my things to go up to the guest room for the night. I heard an engine turning over.

“That sounds too close to the house to be a neighbor… Is someone trying to hotwire my bus?,” I thought.

I went to the window and saw the flames. I ran into the snow barefoot only to find the doors of the bus locked. I ran back in to grab my keys and shout to my sleeping brother, “MAX! I need the fire extinguisher now!”

One of my first thoughts was that Max and his wife were gonna be upset with me for this. I considered not even waking Max or asking for the fire extinguisher. But I was also hopeful that the fire could be contained and this might not wreck my entire life. Maybe I could even put it out in time to play it off like no big deal and that I was only asking for the extinguisher out of an abundance of caution.

That was not the case.

journal: Tuesday, February 3

The loss of my bus (my home) and my art are so devastating that it’s been way too easy for me to lose sight of…

HOW DEVASTATING THE LOSS OF EVERYTHING ELSE IS TOO.

Picking through the charred remains for anything that can be salvaged… – forget about the cost of replacing the bus or the fact that the art can’t be replaced. Virtually everything else I own… – it’s just death by a thousand cuts. I’m gonna be POOR FOREVER.

The fire may not have been my fault, but it’s all FRUIT OF THE POISONOUS TREE (me).

Well there’s the title and concept for a painting if ever there was one.

I’m gonna be fucking fine (or as “fine” as I’ve ever been). I get that. Even as I’m writing this all out. It’s just a low moment. But – fuck – this is all so much and it’s all so hard. 

I had a thought that amused me. I played with the idea of adding it to the incinerated fragments of (what had once been) one of my paintings.

Have you ever fantasized about your home burning down, just to get a totally fresh start?

I USED TO.

Moments of bitter levity aside, I was overwhelmed. Everyone told me to take a minute. Collect myself. Not stress about pulling everything together in time to make it to the next show. I could miss one weekend they told me.

Nope.

I left my ashpile of a bus in NC and rented a van to get to Florida in time for the Downtown Sarasota Festival of the Arts. Late that night, a message popped up on the dash.

DRIVER ALERT
WARNING
REST SUGGESTED

I laughed to myself. “If I won’t take this advice from my loved ones, I’m certainly not taking it FROM A RENTED CARGO VAN.” 

The concept of “pride”… I’m not a fan. There’s not much I’m proud of. But looking across my booth that weekend, I was kind of amazed. Yeah, my ProPanels smelled like burnt trash and Motivation and Luckiest Little Shit were smoke-damaged but fuck me if this set-up didn’t still look impressive. I snapped a photo to share online and captioned it:

If anyone was wondering WHETHER THAT FIRE COULD EAT MY DICK OR NOT – 4 days later, I’m 4 states away, doing the art festival I had booked AS PLANNED

I’m not proud of my clean time. I’m fucking forty. It’s embarrassing that I wasted so many years. I’m only sort of proud of my achievements within the scope of my art career. If I’d not been on drugs forever, I’d have done these things so much sooner. I’d be so much further by now.

But I was proud of this. To experience such loss and not let it slow me at all – it made me feel pretty resilient.

That said, I wondered how people online would respond to the news of the fire. How they’d react to what I was writing and saying about it on social media.

“Probably they’ll just think I’m an idiot, a loser, and that this is more of the same for me.”

“And they’ll probably think this is going to push me to start shooting up again.”

Oh… shit… “This is the first time since the fire that the concept of drugs has even crawled across my brain.”

That wouldn’t have been the case at any other point. Historically, the pattern’s been: (1) bad thing happens, (2) “I need to shoot up right now.”

I wouldn’t say I’m proud that I didn’t immediately fall apart and want to use, but I am pleased by it. That it was never even under consideration is strong evidence of my progress. 

A few weeks later, I was driving, listening to the miserable, self-loathing songs that light up my little punk rock heart and a thought occurred to me: “I love this as much as I ever have, but do I still relate to it? Do these lyrics still describe how I feel?”

It was a major revelation. “Holy shit. For the first time in my life – I don’t think I hate myself anymore.” 

“I think I actually even like myself. I like what I do. I like how I behave. And I really like what I make.” (Actually, I love what I make).

But FIRE ASIDE, things were going well. “Do I just feel good right now? Maybe my response to the fire was a fluke. If something else goes wrong, I might very quickly remember all the excellent and valid reasons  to hate myself.”

I got an answer within minutes. Another driver flagged me down. Said the back corner of my new RV scuffed their car.

My license had just been canceled over some stupid paperwork shit from ten years ago. I’d already enlisted a lawyer to help sort it out but – on that day – I could not have cops show up. I could not have this going through my insurance. I was gonna have to pay these people.

I got the number a week or so later. They wanted $4,600.

I didn’t even know if I’d actually caused any damage, but I couldn’t take any chances. I paid the $4,600. It fucking STUNG. 

But it didn’t make me hate myself. Almost the opposite? Even following THE TREMENDOUS HIT of the fire, I could afford this one too. That meant something.

I didn’t tell too many people about the settlement I’d paid. I was embarrassed even though I felt like the situation wasn’t my fault. Because it wasn’t random chance. A seed had been planted ten years ago when – detoxing from heroin – I’d taken too much Xanax, blacked out, and gotten charged with THREE SIMULTANEOUS DUIs. Now, that seed had BLOSSOMED into more poisonous fruit. 

Journaling, I realized: I’ve always been very good at blaming myself (in a very childish, mostly meaningless sorta way) for anything bad that happened, but I don’t know that I was ever really able to accept responsibility. A lot of the most destructive “fires” in my life were more genuinely my fault than I’ve previously understood. And they shared a common spark – a subconscious core belief that the rules don’t apply to me, so I should be exempt from consequences.

I’ve had an Adderall prescription since I was a kid, but I was all over the country in 2014 and unable to refill it for a few months. When I dropped Abby off at rehab and she offered me her bottle of Adderall, it felt serendipitous. 

Until they charged me with a felony for it.

A more reasonable person might have thought “it’s illegal for me to accept this.” I thought, “this is reasonable, I don’t care that it’s technically illegal.”

Sort of like how I continued to drive when my license was cancelled. 

It shouldn’t have been canceled, so I shouldn’t have to stop driving – right? 

I still don’t “respect” the law but I’m too old to think I can continue to break it and never suffer the consequences. Shit doesn’t work that way.

Maybe I’m not inherently (and irrevocably) poisonous. Maybe I just need to accept that I can’t always get special treatment. And maybe if I learn to accept responsibility when I break a rule, I’ll stop feeling like I’m to blame for the fires that weren’t my fault.

Or maybe not. I DON’T KNOW. This shit just happened. These thoughts are all FRESH FRUIT.

LET’S SEE HOW THEY DO AT MARKET.

12×16-inch prints of “Fruit” are now available in the webstore.

I’ve got upcoming shows in Myrtle Beach, Waynesville (NC), Atlanta, Raleigh, Roanoke, Crestwood (KY), Michigan (West Bloomfield, Cheboygan, and Ludington), St Louis, Chicago, Pittsburgh, and The Hamptons. At least one new show is usually added to the calendar each week, which you can check for more details.

I don’t think I’m going to use this site as a blog anymore. For more regular updates, follow me on Instagram or TikTok.

All the Time Lost

March 11, 2026

“All the Time Lost.” 6/8/25. acrylics and pigment ink on clock face. 28 inch diameter.

In early 2025, I’d been trying to embrace the notion that just because I can’t yet see that things are as they should be – that doesn’t mean they aren’t (or that they won’t be). It just means I can’t see it yet.

As summer crept up, I was not feeling so optimistic. I was thinking a lot about how I’d essentially lost all of my thirties to relapse. How even if my career was going well, it was not going anywhere near as well as it would be if I’d been at it all along.

I was thinking about how back in Round One,1 I was grateful for all of the tragedy and trauma in my life, grateful for my addiction and the time I’d lost to drugs — because all of that led me to art and a life that I enjoyed.

AND I WAS THINKING ABOUT THAT THING WE DON’T LIKE TO TALK ABOUT. And how it’s super fucking hard to be grateful for that. Because what did I get out of it? Eight years of relapse? Hurt, fear, distrust, resentment, and [insert OTHER BAD THINGS here]?

Looking back at my records, I’m kind of blown away by how well I did in those early months (and how quickly I started to take it for granted). The relapse may have cost me momentum, but wasn’t it still a minor miracle that I was able to pick back up as quickly as I did?

 It didn’t feel that way. I was making money, but – even when I’m doing well – if I’m not hitting new benchmarks of success, I start to feel like I’m spinning my wheels. I crave constant progress.

I’d been commissioned to paint A CLOCK, so time was very much on my mind. I titled my clock “ALL THE TIME LOST” and journaled my pessimism into it.

Not everything needs a positive spin. Some things are JUST BAD. If you wanna believe there’s a lesson in everything – sure. But those lessons are not always worth their cost.

“Everything works out in the end. If it hasn’t worked out, it isn’t the end.”

Oh yeah? Works out for who? Innocent people spend decades in prison. Some people DIE YOUNG. Is death an example of shit “working out?” We’ve all got main character syndrome. Someone else’s death isn’t our life lesson.

“Everything will be okay in the end.”

The end is death. If everything is “okay” when you die, it just means “nothing matters when you’re dead.” And “if it doesn’t matter now, then it never really did.”2

It was totally obnoxious but I wound up in the same place I always do:

Any logical conversation about meaning ends at nihilism. So – UGGGGGHHHH – we’ve gotta make our own meaning and make the most of the time we still have left. As ANNOYING AS THAT IS. (‘Cause “for better or worse, someday this will all be over”).3

That was about as positive a conclusion as I could get to. I journaled some more, thinking about the kinds of art walks and street markets I’d been selling my prints at. I was making job money but not runaway success money.

Everything has an opportunity cost. Am I wasting time on “sustenance money” at the expense of higher risk, lower immediate-return efforts that could pay off bigger later? Am I inadvertently branding myself as a street-level artist when I wanna be in high-end galleries? I’ve only been clean 14 months. Am I impatient? How often should I be hitting major achievements?

And BECAUSE THEY’RE NEVER FAR FROM MY MIND…

Signed, limited-edition “classroom” sized clocks are available for purchase in the webstore.

As for girls, the current dearth of FRESH CANDIDATES actually has me reconsidering investing my time and energy into saving/repairing one that’s still broken. 

I’m comfortable for now. I miss having a partner. If the rest of my life looked just like this but with a partner, I could be happy with that. But I’d like more.

By sometime in the fall, I had an epiphany: I was happier than I’d ever been. It occurred me that this was true even without a girlfriend. It had barely been a year since I’d been seeing someone but it was still the longest I’d ever gone. Was it possible my happiness was at least in part because I didn’t have a girlfriend?

I honestly can’t say but I do know it’s because (contrary to what I’d written) I did not go back to the girl I knew to be broken. And I didn’t go out with any other girls I met that weren’t emotionally where I needed them to be.

In the past, the moment I met a pretty girl that liked me, I was in. It didn’t matter if she was fucked up. I probably even liked it if she was a little fucked up. That was no longer true. I want someone who is both inspiring to and inspired by me. Someone who wants me but doesn’t need me. 

I’m not gonna pretend that the song title “(Holy Shit (I Can’t Believe)) I Still Don’t Have a Girlfriend”4 doesn’t regularly pop into my head. But lately I am hitting new benchmarks of success. AND I’M SO FUCKING BUSY EVERY DAY. Things are going really well and I don’t have the TIME to stress girls all that much.

It’ll WORK OUT when it’s supposed to.5

  1. “Round One” is what I call 2013-2015 – the three years I was making art before I relapsed and stopped for almost 9 years. ↩︎
  2. That’s a lyric from “The Politics of Starving” by Against Me! ↩︎
  3. Another lyric – from “My Staple Diet Of Rice, Vitamins, Alcohol, and Painkillers” by The Murderburgers. ↩︎
  4. A song by The Steinways. ↩︎
  5. I finished this painting/clock in June 2025 but wrote this statement for it in January 2026. ↩︎

Ever since the fire that burned down my bus/home, I’ve been hemorrhaging money. Luckily, I’ve also been making a lot of money. After getting ProPanels the last week of December, I started applying to “higher tier” events, like juried art festivals. I’ve been getting into most of them and it’s going well so far. This week though, I’ve got decisions coming in for six of them so CROSS YOUR FINGERS FOR ME. This week has the potential to make me feel like THE UNDISPUTED CHAMPION or to majorly bum me the fuck out. That said, I applied with a booth photo I took of my very first set-up (before I knew what I was doing) so… my future applications will be better. (That’s what I’ll tell myself anyway if things don’t go my way this week).

I don’t really use this “blog” for anything but adding art to the website and writing whatever’s on my mind right when I do that. If you want near-daily updates from me, I post all the time on TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook. There’s a bunch of stuff on there from the last month about THE FIRE, the new RV, the painting I’ve been working on for the last month, and lots of videos in which you can see how clever I think I am.

And check out the Events page. I’ve got stuff on there right now for the Carolinas, Atlanta, Kentucky, St Louis, Chicago, and I’ll add more as they’re confirmed.

Here are the three songs I mentioned:

(this is the best one)

I Wish I Were Dead

February 21, 2026

I Wish I Were Dead | 2/3/2013 | crayon and pigment ink | 11 x 8 ½ in

In 2013, still living in an inpatient treatment facility – but having been there long enough to have some privileges – I was allowed to leave for up to two hours on Sundays if I had visitors.

When that happened, we’d usually go to a restaurant and I’d usually get a kids menu and a pack of crayons, so that I’d have something to do (to make me feel less anxious about having to interact with people that loved me).

If I wrote about this specific drawing back when I made it, I’ve since lost the text. It’s totally possible that I was very sincerely feeling like I wanted to die. But – especially back then – thoughts like I wish I were dead were just the kinda thing that constantly swirled around in my brain and brought me comfort even if I was feeling fine. I don’t remember which was the case on this particular afternoon.

It’d probably make sense for me to write a proper blog entry about everything that’s going on now, in February 2026, but I DON’T FEEL LIKE IT. Here are the bullet points:

  • My bus caught fire in North Carolina on the night of February 1. It (and most everything inside) was completely destroyed.
  • I rented a cargo van to get to Florida for the two events I had here this month.
  • I’ve got issues with the very concept of “pride,” but I was (admittedly) pretty fucking proud of myself for pulling my shit together so quickly and not letting the fire slow me down.
  • I bought a new (to me) RV a week or so ago. I was originally scheduled to be in Alabama this weekend but I did cancel that just to give myself time to finish sorting through the terribly messy aftermath of the fire and to get myself reorganized and all set up in the new RV.
  • I’m back on the road later this week and will stay out for at least five months. I’ve currently got events scheduled every single weekend from now through July. They’re all in the part of the country between Atlanta, Baltimore, and Chicago. What’s not already up on the calendar, I’ll add soon.

People have been incredibly loving and supportive following the fire. If you’re one of those people, thank you. If this is the first you’re hearing of it, you should PROBABLY BE FOLLOWING ME ON SOCIAL MEDIA [TikTok, Instagram, Facebook].

Just Like You Wanted

January 31, 2026

As I continue to be TRAPPED BY WINTER, here’s another older piece for the historical archives that never made it online…

“Just Like You Wanted” | 8/11/14 | alcohol and pigment inks on watercolor paper | 7×5″

This drawing is part of a series that also includes “Bad Things Happen (to Kids That Fuck),” “I Finally Understand All Those Straight Edge Songs on the Radio!,” and “I Work Hard for the Money.”

Originally, they were all one large drawing, but I liked them better in smaller pieces so I cut the page up into four differently-sized segments.

Visually, they don’t look quite like anything else I’ve ever made. Part of that is because they’re ink, not paint, but there’s a reason they don’t even look like my other ink drawings. When I picked the drawing up and looked at the back of the paper, there was a ton of bleed-through – and it looked really cool. I liked the back of the paper better than the side I’d colored. So I flipped the paper over and redid all of the black outlines on that side. And then I wrote out all of my text. Which, in this one, says…

“You made it into my art. I guess you affected me. Just like you wanted.”

It’s about a girl I was dating pretty casually but who was really into the idea of getting me very emotionally invested in her – even though she wasn’t particularly invested in me. I imagine that had something to do with her bipolar disorder. In any case, as the drawing indicates, she did ultimately succeed in fucking with my emotional well-being.

BULLY FOR HER.

7×5-inch prints of “Just Like You Wanted” and the other drawings in this series are available in the webstore. Send a message for current availability of original drawings.

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