crime – Sam North

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 1^st – 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.