Rose & Eel, 2021

Rose & Eel stages a quiet confrontation between beauty, decay, and persistence. A blooming rose rises improbably from a skull while an eel coils nearby, its sinuous body suggesting subterranean movement and hidden vitality. The skull anchors the image in mortality, yet the living forms refuse stillness or finality. Rather than presenting death as an end, the painting frames it as fertile ground—an unstable foundation from which desire, memory, and life continue to emerge. The work reads as a meditation on transformation, where elegance and unease are inseparable.

Daily Painting #66; March 12, 2021.