UNTITLED (MONSTER), ACRYLIC AND OIL PASTELS ON 53 SQUARE FEET OF WOOD PANEL

A lifelong friend, who is also a big fan of Jean Michel Basquiat, challenged me with this commission direction: make it look like a wall covered in soviet propaganda and then covered in graffiti, but in your style.

First, he and I discussed his living space, the walls, the views of the rooms etc etc. We also considered that he could potentially move in the future, so the work needed to be versatile. We decided the artwork would cover four panels, each sized equally in height but with different widths. The total artwork size, 53 square feet! As I sketched concepts I knew that I didn’t want a “left to right” story to unfold, I wanted all the stories to be intertwined. I accomplished this by creating a pattern where any panel could exist next to any of the other panels, left or right, and still have seamless imagery. Like a puzzle with no wrong answers visually.