“Bubbles 2.0” | 1/29/26 | crayon and pigment ink on bristol | 8 x 6 in
From March 13th, 2013
In the last year, I learned to use art as a tool for emotional health. Since I’ve been out of treatment, I’ve been doing well in that area, but my counselor insists I still need to improve my social health.
One day, I accidentally went out to lunch with some people. I crept around until I found the restaurant’s stock of crayons and paper. I didn’t have anything in mind when I started (other than removing myself from the world around me so I wouldn’t have to interact awkwardly with other human beings) so I just chose a color that appealed to me and drew some shapes I liked. At some point, I decided what the shapes were, added to them to form the image of a kid blowing a bubble, and then captioned it with the first thing that came to mind.
This little drawing has no unique significance to me, but – like a lot of what I do – it’s evidence of how far I’ve come. Granted, one could suggest that – ideally – I wouldn’t feel the need to escape reality at all, but I think drawing is a big step up from shooting heroin. And – while I can see some validity to the opposing point of view – I don’t think social interaction is all that much more important than doing something that helps me feel productive and (in a very real sense) valuable.
For years, I’d wake up with a sigh, as I contemplated another day of being alive and – even worse – being me. Sometimes I create things that have a deeper meaning. Other times, I just draw little cartoons that I think are cute or clever and are little more than they appear. Both of these kinds of art are important because both are pieces of what makes me happy to be living and breathing as Sam North. A lot of people could do what I do, but a lot of people don’t. For whatever reason, I do – and that’s something I’ve been rewarded for in innumerable ways every day. What I once considered a terrible fate, I’m now incredibly grateful for. I’m pretty excited about being me.
From January 29th, 2026
The earlier (now retired) digitally manipulated print
When I first started making art, I didn’t know it was important to get good captures of my finished work. Getting a decent reproduction of “Bubbles” required digitally manipulating a blurry photo to the point that it didn’t really look like the original drawing anymore. I sold a bunch of “Bubbles” prints but it never sat right with me that they looked so different.
Lately, I’ve been more focused on presentation. That’s meant raising my own standards. To keep “Bubbles” in my print inventory, I’d have to redo it. So I traced the original photograph onto bristol, re-colored it with crayon, and did the outlines in pigment ink. Hence “Bubbles 2.0.”
“Uncertainty over Unhappiness.” 5/5/25. Ink on bristol. 10×10″.
This drawing started with a request: “Will you make a painting of my house?”
Yeah, um, absolutely not.
But I told the guy I could do my usual nonsense but work his house somewhere in there.
He was cool with that but told me he didn’t want any BAD WORDS or NEGATIVE MESSAGES. As if I couldn’t have deduced that on my own. I don’t take instructions but I’m not gonna deliver something I know the buyer won’t like. And someone who starts off with a request like his – he wants something SAFE. Safe = uplifting, positive. Hope, not despair. And NOTHING TOO FUNNY OR CYNICAL.
Listening to a podcast, I heard something that I’d written about many times before: “People will choose unhappiness over uncertainty.” Hearing it articulated by someone else made it feel especially profound – particularly in relation to someone who’d been blowing up my phone all day. I knew UNCERTAINTY VS UNHAPPINESS had to be the theme here; I just needed a positive angle on it.
I wrote a journal into the drawing:
It’s frustrating when someone you love chooses to rot in misery. What’s she so afraid of? Why can’t she break away?
BUT I DID THE SAME THING. I surrendered to an empty life because my familiar rut was comfortable compared to other hells I’d called home (or the hell in my imagination).
SOMETIMES A SAFETY NET IS MORE NET THAN SAFETY. I had to lose mine to break free.
But uncertainty is better than unhappiness. “Someday this will all be over” and the regrets I’ve got are enough. Despair’s not worth much; might as well trade it for uncertainty. It’s worth the risk.
I was trying to articulate the sense of danger that breaking out of a rut often requires. You don’t like what your life’s become but you’re afraid to change anything. I did this for YEARS, so I get it. I told myself, “It could be SO MUCH WORSE. Surely, this degree of unhappiness is manageable.”
But that’s not living- it’s surviving. And our time is limited. We need to be bold. We need to chase dreams. And so long as we’re making a genuine effort – following our hearts instead of giving in to fear – I think it’s rare for things to go too wrong.
It’s only in resignation that we sink into really deep, lasting depressions. Nobody making a real effort is sad all the time because making an effort is ENERGIZING. The pursuit itself makes us feel good. Even when I’ve fallen short or things didn’t work out exactly as I’d like, I’ve yet to regret any steps I’ve taken to improve my life.
On the other hand, when I’ve resisted change – just to hold onto the pathetic little comforts I thought made my life bearable: I’d give just about anything to go back and let my shit fall apart sooner – so that I could get better sooner.
If you’ve gotta convince yourself that you’re happy, you’re not. And you won’t be until you make serious changes. And you probably already know what those changes are. If you’re afraid, don’t be. In considering bold, positive steps, the things we’re afraid to lose are likely keeping us sick. And the thing we’re actually most likely to lose is our misery.
A note about this drawing’s origins…
Toward the end of my eight-and-a-half year relapse, I’d become so resigned to addiction for the rest of my life, that I decided to try to start making art again. Until that point, it’d always been my policy that art and drugs would never coexist in my life. I started one painting and one drawing but didn’t get very far. This was the drawing. It sat unfinished for months while I was still using.
The guy who originally wanted to commission a painting of his house wasn’t paying enough for any painting (even if, as agreed, I’d make whatever I wanted and just include his house somewhere in it). So I offered him a 10×10-inch drawing instead, with the plan that I’d finally finish this one, which had been sitting untouched for a year even after I got clean. He agreed, so that’s what I did.
It’s been a little bit of a rough month. Four of my last five dates got canceled for weather. Wind in Venice, an ice storm in Columbia, and now snow in Greensboro and Charlotte. It’s a pretty major financial hit, so I have to remind myself that I’m still doing VERY WELL.
I’ll be back in Florida next week for the Downtown Sarasota Festival of the Arts. Judging just by the exhibitor standards and the cost to participate, it seems like a more exclusive step-up from the other events I’ve done in the past. I’m excited to see if it draws a wealthier crowd – the kind of people who’ll drop four-figures, right then and there, for a painting they like. Up to this point, I haven’t sold any of my more expensive paintings at an event like this. I’ve sold smaller ones for a few hundred and I’ve met people who followed-up and later bought a more expensive painting but never on the spot.
I still want to get into more galleries (which is where I’ve historically sold my bigger, more expensive paintings) but if it turns out that I can find the right buyers at art festivals – THAT’S COOL TOO. I’ve currently got a bunch of applications in for similar events scattered across the southeast and midwest. Decisions on those applications start coming in next month.
I’m a little nervous that my work, at first glance, might turn off some jurors at “higher tier” festivals, but I have no doubts about the strength of my work. I’m optimistic that some jurors will recognize its value, even quickly flipping through applications on a screen and missing smaller details, like the more meaningful passages of text. Though I also know some will scoff at what they perceive as crude titles (without looking any deeper) or that some purists might say things like, “This guy is a writer masquerading as a painter. Real artists don’t need words to be evocative.”
They’re wrong, of course. People want to connect on a deeper level and language makes that possible. My text enhances my paintings in the same way lyrics enhance a song.
Does it sound like I’m GETTING DEFENSIVE? Defensive against a critic who (thus far) only exists in my head?
I mean, that’s pretty on brand for me, wouldn’t you say?
Arguing with ghosts is fun. I ALWAYS WIN.
Check the Events page for more info on everything I’ve got coming up. Prints of “Uncertainty over Unhappiness” are now available in the webstore.
It’s probably a consequence of the specific “world” I grew up in but I don’t really know too many people who are succeeding. A lot of my friends struggle. Some aren’t especially happy.
I don’t envy my friends that put in 40 hours on shit they don’t particularly like, to make some dipshit (that’s dumber than they are) richer than they are.
And then they pay rent. To a LANDLORD. Because he owns the properties. Inherited, or bought with money most of us will never have.
The system is fucked. AND WE’RE (mostly) WHITE KIDS. (Or more recently/accurately, white “adults”). We’ve got SOME DEGREE OF PRIVILEGE.
Then again, like attracts like; my friends are like me. And being a working-class, too-smart-for-your-own-good basketcase isn’t exactly a recipe for UPWARD CLASS MOBILITY.
There’s this lyric: “the decks are stacked and the house always wins when the dealer’s crooked … but we’ve been counting cards. We’re fucking fed up; shit’s gone too far.”2
I love that line. The world’s gonna cheat us and we’ve still gotta play the hand we’re dealt, so fuck THEIR rules. We’ll play it our way, with every trick we’ve got.
I often describe my art career as “A PRETTY GOOD SCAM.” That’s honestly what it feels like.
I wake up every day and do whatever the fuck I want. I write about myself and paint funny facesin ridiculous colors – and then I getpaid for it. I’m not rich, but I’m not poor either. In the last year, I’ve loaned or given money to friends and family that have fucking jobs.
When I started down this path, I had zero technical ability as an artist (AND I’VE NOT GAINED MUCH SINCE THEN). I’ve refined my eye for color and composition, but what I have most of all is a personality, a worldview, and the ability and willingness to articulate it (in a way that other people find funny, insightful, and resonant). That’s been the key ingredient in my success. I’m the only person in the world who can do exactly what I do.
But my broken brain, personality, worldview, and INABILITY TO EVER SHUT THE FUCK UP also led me to heroin. And heroin has eaten years of my life and taken me to horribly traumatic places that I’d tell you about IF I WANTED TO START CRYING RIGHT NOW.
Ultimately, heroin led me to expressive art therapy. Which I hated because I was bad at it. But I really liked the way the other mental cases responded when it’d be my turn in group to talk about what I’d made. They laughed when I wanted. They were affected when I wanted. And they fed me praise.
Returning to the world, I needed an income, but I’d never successfully held a job. I’m INSUBORDINATE.
Though I didn’t have the first clue if it was even possible, or how to go about it, I decided to see if anyone would buy my art. Turns out it was possible right outta the gate.
Three years later, I experienced the worst trauma of my life, fell the fuck apart, relapsed for 8 years, and resigned myself to failure and addiction forever. Until my girlfriend decided the future might look better with someone else. So I got clean (TO SHOW HER) and started painting again. I anxiously anticipated it blowing up in my face, but didn’t know what else to do.
Wanna know the really fucked up part? A year and change later, I’m happier than I’ve ever been. I wake up excited each day. I’m excited for the future.
Monday through Thursday is a lot of writing, inventory, accounting, logistics, booking, website and bus maintenance.
Friday through Sunday, I set-up a killer display of THE BEST FUCKING ART EVER MADE and I work on my latest painting while singing along to all my favorite punk rock, as strangers give me their money in exchange for the products of my mental illness, my personality, my traumas, and my victories.
A lot of my life’s been pretty miserable. I’ve got some dark stories. I’ve lived through dark YEARS.
But “The Luckiest Little Shit in the World” is a victory product. It’s a victory lap on 2025, when I relaunched my art career, killed it, and had a fucking blast. It’s really not even fair how much fun I’m having and how much the world rewards me for it. I really do feel like the luckiest little shit in the world.
FOR NOW. Fear and anxiety are never far from my mind. These good feelings are fairly new and I’m still sorta broken – I’m still me – and thank fucking god for that.
It’s the key ingredient.
I’m sure there’s some degree of recency bias, but this just might be my favorite thing that I’ve ever painted. I think I mentioned in my blog entry for “So Smart”3 that I had a sorta epiphany in October, when I realized that I was happier than I’ve ever been. That’s when I came up with the concept for this painting and I couldn’t wait to finish “So Smart” and get to this one. It pleases me to no end that it turned out every bit as well as I could’ve hoped.
Virtually all of this painting’s statement appears right on the canvas [starting in the square-headed, rainbow-toothed figure at the bottom left]. There’s some additional text scattered about too though. Some of it’s stuff that also appears in the statement/main body of text but some’s totally different. I’m not gonna transcribe all of it here but it includes:
Embarrassing, insecure, spur-of-the-moment journaling after two girls separately propositioned me, and how that felt validating even though there’s only one girl I really want attention from right now. (90% of this is written on the top edge of the canvas so can only be read from the actual painting).
The realization that I’ve somehow never had to get a job to pay bills.
The recognition that – even if you took away everything else that’s good in my life – the unreasonable amount of joy I get from miserable punk songs still gives me an unfair advantage (toward being happy) over everyone else on the planet.
“Is the universe FUCKING WITH ME or looking out for me by giving me two disappointing weekends right after I start a painting about how I’m SO GOD DAMNED #BLESSED?”
And some other random stuff about not making enough money – then immediately making more than enough money – plus some anxiety written in a moment when I stopped being stoked on this painting, thought it wasn’t gonna be good enough, only to quickly figure out how to make it better and get stoked on it again.
On Monday night, I was rejected for some group exhibition at a gallery, for which I’d thought I was a shoe-in because I’ve become too self-assured when it comes to my work. I wrote about that in more detail here.
Yesterday, I was accepted to (what I understand to be) an art festival held in particularly high-regard. I’m putting in applications to lots of similar events in the coming weeks. I’m excited to see how those all play out.
There’s a lot here that calls to mind earlier work. The other paintings featured in this blog entry are the ones with statements I’ve hyperlinked in the body of the text. ↩︎
The song I’m referencing is “Countin’ Cards” by Escape from the Zoo: ↩︎
Nope – it’s in the statement for “All the Time Lost,” which I’ve not yet published online. ↩︎
‘Tis a sad, sad day for Sammy thrashLife collectors. The original “I’m a Fucking Artist, Guys” drawing is officially OFF THE MARKET.
I’ll confess that I did come down from the $1,000 asking price but I assure you it still sold for enough to enrage anyone upset by outlandish prices for scribbles on scrap paper. 😝
THAT SAID, this is the drawing featured on all my cards and fliers (arguably my TRADEMARK DOODLE), it was one of the very first things I ever made on my own (as opposed to – at gunpoint – in expressive art therapy group), and I think it’s as close to a HISTORICAL ARTIFACT as anything I’ve ever made so… I’m both happy that it’s found a home and a little sad to see it go.
Also sold this weekend: another piece that means a whole, whole lot to me (and had actually been sold once before but came back to me through A SERIES OF WACKY CIRCUMSTANCES): “Have Sex with and/or Buy Art from Me” – arguably the best/most accurate piece I ever made about my self-esteem and the subject of VALIDATION.
The last couple months have been especially great and I just wanna, again, thank everyone that’s been so supportive. It was exactly one year and one week ago that I tried to kill myself because I couldn’t imagine my life ever getting back to (essentially) where I am today. I’ve still not proved myself wrong on my 2016/2017 theory that my life peaked in 2013-15 and I’d never again be that happy or successful, but I certainly seem to be ON THE PATH and, for the first time in years, I think it might be possible.
my current work-in-progress – not done yet but getting CLOSE
Small aside: I recently got pro panels/pop-up walls so that I could show at art festivals (and use them at my little weekend/pop-up events) but I’ve already put them in storage because I only currently have three unsold originals that aren’t currently up on display somewhere (I’ve got nothing to hang on my walls!) It’s not a bad problem to have.
And if you’d like to exacerbate that problem by purchasing one of them, you know how to reach me.
“Peeing in the Pool (of Tears (You’re Drowning In))” 1/4/25. Acrylic paint. 18×24″“”Christian Love (The Grace of a Mountain Goat)” 10/22/24. Pigment and alcohol inks. 8½x11″.“The World Revolves Around Me.” 8/21/15. Acrylic paint. 4×4′.
And just ’cause, let’s say $20 off in the webstore this week when you spend $50 or more. Use promo code STLapril.
Thanks as always for your time and attention. You guys are the best.
I’ve struggled with whether or not I should post this image. I drew this the day after “Clarity” and the day before “No Accident.” If you haven’t read the entries that I wrote to go along with those pieces, you should. This week in December may have been the most significant of my life. I’m very glad that it played out as it did.
![Apparently Proverbs 5:19 says: “Like a loving doe and a graceful mountain goat, Let her breasts satisfy you at all times; Be exhilarated always with her love.” So… Christianity is fucking weird, you guys. Then again, I sure could go for a nice girl with ]THE GRACE OF A MOUNTAIN GOAT and, like, really cool tits. Anyone know how I’d go about getting baptized?](https://samnorth.art/wp-content/uploads/Grace-of-a-Mountain-Goat-751x1024.jpg)
