This painting is not a concept, or a pose, or an idea. It’s a memory of exactly what the title says it is. I don’t think she even realized I was taking her picture. It’s my closest friend, whose little boy I loved like my own. This was near the end of his four year battle with leukemia. He died less than three weeks after his sixth birthday. That was in 2011, and it’s taken me this long to begin to sort through that overwhelming loss on the canvas. Maybe it was the loss of my dad in December that put me in a place where I needed to. This was the most difficult experience emotionally that I’ve ever had with a painting, but ultimately it needed to be done - an ode to all the cancer moms and what they go through.
Cancer Mom was a finalist in the prestigious 2023 International Biennial Portrait Competition, hosted by the Wausau Museum of Contemporary Art, as well as being accepted to the equally prestigious And Now for Something New, Vol. 6, an annual international juried exhibition held by LeMieux Galleries in New Orleans, Louisiana, opening on August 3, 2024.
This work is also a three-time FAV15% selection of the BoldBrush Painting Competitions: August 2023, December 2023, and August 2025.
This painting is not a concept, or a pose, or an idea. It’s a memory of exactly what the title says it is. I don’t think she even realized I was taking her picture. It’s my closest friend, whose little boy I loved like my own. This was near the end of his four year battle with leukemia. He died less than three weeks after his sixth birthday. That was in 2011, and it’s taken me this long to begin to sort through that overwhelming loss on the canvas. Maybe it was the loss of my dad in December that put me in a place where I needed to. This was the most difficult experience emotionally that I’ve ever had with a painting, but ultimately it needed to be done - an ode to all the cancer moms and what they go through.
Cancer Mom was a finalist in the prestigious 2023 International Biennial Portrait Competition, hosted by the Wausau Museum of Contemporary Art, as well as being accepted to the equally prestigious And Now for Something New, Vol. 6, an annual international juried exhibition held by LeMieux Galleries in New Orleans, Louisiana, opening on August 3, 2024.
This work is also a three-time FAV15% selection of the BoldBrush Painting Competitions: August 2023, December 2023, and August 2025.