About This Artwork: I had an idea to incorporate a stuffed snake around the outer edge of a canvas. I got the snake from the San Diego Zoo store. It sat in my office for over a year, while a 36 x 36 inch canvas with two circles sat on my bigger easel for just as long. I had plans to paste paper collar patterns all over the canvas, but it took me forever to finally do that. Meanwhile, I worked on many other paintings while this one sat and sat. I painted the collar pieces separately: red, pink, green, and blue, adhered them to the canvas and decided to cover the canvas in a thin wash of white oil paint and scrape through to the underlying paint with a toothpick. It again sat there for a long time before I decided to add the characters.

The characters live inside me and often argue with my better judgement to leave them out of my art. They beg to be placed into the paintings so that they can simply exist and have a life in my work. Who am I to squelch them from living?

When I was finally finished painting this, I tore open the snake and re-stuffed him inside out and sewed him to the edges of the canvas.