The year between Sept 21 - Sept 22 I painted like I had never painted before and hope to never paint again.

I painted for survival, for oxygen, for peace. I painted for connection, for longing, for pain.

I painted with oils. I couldn’t really afford oils , I kept them in my draw for a time where I could afford to use them, but I figured to afford anything you need to be breathing. These were my lifeline into my next breath. Mentally, they kept me moving. They kept me feeling some kind of worth when every part of my body became worthless.

I had canvases for another time. This time as upon me, it was late at night, by myself, and you. Sometimes wine, sometimes music, but mostly in silence, with you.

Everything I knew about the world, my world, came crashing down in a matter of hours, actually one breath was all it took.

These nine works below make up Oxygen Collection. Created in the first 3 months after our son’s funeral. Treading through water I never knew existed. Disbelief, a heart in 9 thousand pieces, the silence was deafening. I remember sitting there feeling my heart ache and understanding that the term heartache came from the physical feeling of pain from an emotional experience. I can feel it now as I type. Clenching on your pulse, a feeling so heavy you're not sure the blood will pass through your wilted veins. So thick in its force.

And of course in this deep disparity, life around continues. People sent flowers, so many god damn flowers about to wilt in front of me like that day all over again. They cut the stems from life itself for the short lived pleasure of 'thinking of you'. 

I say this because I felt this, I couldn’t believe this, in reflection utterly ungrateful, at the time, confusion. I would throw the flowers out before complete dismay just so I didn’t have to live that day again. 

The scent, fumes suffocating.

So I painted, of course, these flowers. I didn't want to. More like statues, lifeless in their form, but not the marble kind or porcelain, the kind that had smashed into smithereens on a cold concrete floor. 

But stood.

I still, to this day, refer to these strokes as I paint. You can’t replicate, simulate or false shock, numbness and  disbelief. These feelings fade into some kind of acceptance, learning and longing.


The strokes I’ll never paint again, a heaviness that lingers near.

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In reference to three collections originally minted on Eth in 2021-2022. Some works have been tele-burned to BTC since.

‘Oxygen Collection’
‘The Flowers Have Arrived’
‘Socially Conscious’

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MelzieQ