An attempt at explanation 2026

I paint these figures because I needed a way to look at what was inside me without it swallowing me.

They started as pressure. Memory without a clean ending. Fear that never learned a name. Feelings that sat in my chest for years with nowhere to go. Painting gave them a body. Once they had a body, I could stand a few feet away and decide how they looked.

Most of these faces don’t speak. They show teeth. Teeth feel older than language. They say survive. They say stay alert. They say don’t get too close. That instinct runs under a lot of my life. Keep moving. Keep proving your worth. Don’t stop long enough for something to catch you. These paintings became a place to put that instinct so it didn’t have to live entirely inside me.

I don’t see them as monsters in a simple way. They feel more like presences. The thing that shows up when you’re alone in a room. The thing that rides with you after a hard conversation. The thing that slips in when you try to rest and your mind starts replaying old footage. Painting gives that presence anatomy. Once it has form, it stops being vague and overpowering. It becomes something I can frame.

There’s also care in them. I’ve spent a lot of my life steadying other people, holding space, trying to keep things from falling apart. That habit doesn’t disappear when you’re alone. These paintings feel like that instinct turned inward. Taking the parts of myself that feel ugly or chaotic and giving them somewhere to exist that isn’t my body.

The reason they feel inter dimensional to me is because they aren’t imaginary in a dismissive sense. They’re real experiences wearing symbolic skin. They’re the shape of feelings I couldn’t explain when I was a kid and sometimes still can’t explain now. Painting them lets me acknowledge that those experiences happened without letting them run the present.

Visually, I want them to hit fast. High contrast. Simple silhouettes. Faces that don’t hide. I’m not trying to make puzzles. I want something readable across a room. Something that lands before you have time to intellectualize it. A doorway, not a riddle.

When they’re all up on the wall together, they stop feeling like a single image and start feeling like a chorus. Different moods. Different eras. Different versions of me. None of them are in charge. They’re just present. That feels important.

This work is part of a larger personal mythology I’m building. Not as escapism, but as structure. A container strong enough to hold intensity without collapsing. Ramen Shaman isn’t a character to hide behind. It’s a way of organizing a life that’s been shaped by pressure, loss, responsibility, and survival into something that can still make meaning.

These paintings are evidence. Proof that the internal weight has somewhere to go. Proof that I can live with it without becoming it.

That’s why I keep painting them.