I’ve been wanting to be more intentional about photography and stop using my phone so often. So, after some asking around for recommendations, I got an old Nikon D90 and 2 kit lenses. I’ve been having a lot of fun going on walks during the day but especially at night and trying to find things to capture. Light is so exciting to try and compose and catch.
My watercolor process has been somewhat slow and meticulous leading to some overthinking about theme and compisition. It’s made pieces take longer and longer, turning into procrastination. So I’m trying to draw faster and in shorter bursts to outpace any fussing. Working with some of my favorite Japanese inking pens like the Tombow Fudenosuke and some chunkier nameless ones for filling.
A Fire Horse to ring in the New Year and some other things…
ask the indigo moon
a blessing of burning stars
and we must feed the killers of men to the killers of men
Another new piece! This one is larger than the others at 16″x20″, the biggest I’ve worked with watercolor. I had a strong mental image for this and it came out kind of precise because of that. I like it but I want to work more spontaneity into my watercolor work, more pretty bleeds, textures, all the things that make watercolors themselves.
Enmity in the Sanctum of the Swelling Sun // 2025 // watercolor and gouache ๐
Solid pseudopapillary neoplasm by Omid Savari, M.D.
โNovels, one would have thought, would have been devoted to influenza; epic poems to typhoid; odes to pneumonia, lyrics to toothache. But no; with a few exceptionsโฆ literature does its best to maintain that its concern is with the mind; that the body is a sheet of plain glass through which the soul looks straight and clear. On the contrary, the very opposite is true. All day, all night the body intervenesโฆ But of all this daily drama of the body there is no recordโฆ To look at these things squarely in the fact would need the courage of a lion tamer; a robust philosophy; a reason rooted in the bowels of the earth.โ
Woolf, On Being Ill
Authorโs note: I wrote this because a lot of people reach out to me on social media to ask about my experience having a Whipple. They are either getting one or supporting a loved one who needs to undergo the procedure. Despite this procedure being pretty rare, this request for information happens fairly frequently. I wanted to share my experience and give people an in-depth view of having this procedure and the recovery process while also offering some encouragement. If youโre wondering why this is in second person, its because I initially started writing this in response to someone asking what they could expect with the Whipple. But then I started talking to my past self, a different self than the one writing this paragraph. I hope you find it helpful, whoever you are, and good luck.
Recovering from surgery again, though this time not anywhere near as intense as my Whipple. Still, its been three weeks and I’m just getting my feet under me. I have a longform piece of writing I’m going to share documenting my experience with the Whipple soon that I’ve been working on the past month.
For now, here’s a little collection of art work from the past few months! Some intensive pieces at the top which are more recent and some experiments further below from several months ago.
The Fullness Of Emptying All Thy Faithful Plenitude, watercolor and gouache
Ramulose, watercolor and gouache
Sunprints my partner, Tess and I madeMarbling experiments
I used to do this on an older blog of mine, collect a bunch screenshots and pages and art I find then sort it and let it coalescence into something thematic. This post is to archive some of those older collections of snippets.
Today is my 35th birthday and I’m thinking about my body. How’s it endured for me and carried all manner of pain, but also how often I’ve ignored it. Taken it’s annoying but manageable chronic illnesses for granted. 35 is an age, like many before it, that I didn’t think I’d ever reach.
trust not the eye; make of your meat an imaging device 