Themes on paper. The ICU series was born out of a few unfortunate events. In 2018 my blood reared its power and I was hospitalized with autoimmune hemolytic anemia. After 13 blood transfusions, dozens of needles stuck in me, a course of drugs, I was discharged. Two years later, the rupture of my pancreas landed me in the ICU for 3 days. Now I was in a bad way. Morphine eased the pain. So many procedures all done during the height of covid lockdowns. The paintings were made out of the hazy remembrance of the chaos. The late night visits from the phlebotomist, the MRI under heavy morphine, the camera shots of the necrosis. All of it informed my hand. Fortunately I had enough of this, it was over, so I morphed certain aspects into the Fitch Mountain series. Fitch Mountain isn’t really a mountain but its not really a hill either. I like to think of it as a euphemism for a mountain, a daily visual from my front porch. Fitch Mountain was the base layer that I used to start over. I jokily told myself, Fitch Mountain is my haystack. The early summer sun blasts its light around the edge of the summit, the early evening moon hovers over it like a face reminding me of my place. I have been told that a stream runs underground from the mountain under my house. And I sometimes wonder what is going on inside its core. What is its blood?