At the time of this painting I was feeling a certain heaviness in my heart that had been there for several months. It was the kind of heaviness that had me waking up in the middle of the night because even in my dreams, the feeling was present. I felt like I had no control of what was going on in my head and I was simply there, watching it all play out.

This painting took me almost a year to complete. It’s rare for me to spend this much time on a single painting, which led me to almost give up on it several times. Each time I said I was done with it, an idea would come to mind and I would continue on. I guess I had a hard time expressing the concept of the painting.

There’s this pressure in our society to hustle and be productive all the time. People forget that rest is necessary for us to be our best selves and do our best work.

I started this painting while I was on a road trip without much of a plan other than to keep driving west. I stayed at a tiny house in Portland, Oregon when I began painting the rabbit. Throughout my road trip, I would randomly add the different elements to the painting whenever ideas would come to me.

I was one day inspired to paint on a bigger canvas. I’ve been slowly building up my confidence to paint bigger and bigger, increasing the canvas size 10 inches at a time. I picked up a 30x40 canvas without the slightest idea as to what I was going to paint on it.