Image 1 of 1
Image 1 of 1
Image 1 of 1
Image 1 of 1
2025
6 × 8 in.
Watercolor and Ink on Paper
Two figures float upward together, surrounded by color and small abstract forms as they make their way toward heaven. They are separate people, but their bodies move in the same direction, almost as though neither one is making the journey without the other.
The idea came from a speech in Rick and Morty that stuck with me. In the Fear Hole at Denny’s, Morty is confronted with the idea that happiness can be frightening because eventually it has to end. You can find the person you love more than anyone else in the world and build an entire life with them, but there is still no version of that happiness that lasts forever. The thought eventually arrives at a dark conclusion: the best-case scenario is that you die at the same time.
That idea sounds incredibly depressing, but I also find something strangely beautiful about it.
If you truly find the person you want to spend your life with, one of you will normally have to experience losing the other. Someone eventually has to be the person left behind. So in an almost impossible best-case scenario, neither person ever has to experience a life without the other. They live together, grow together, die together, and whatever comes afterward, they enter together.
That is what the two figures represent. They aren't falling. They're going somewhere together.
The painting isn't really about wanting to die. It's about wanting a love so complete that even death doesn't create the moment when one person has to continue without the other. Heaven becomes less important as a specific destination and more important as the possibility that there might be somewhere else to go together.
There is an uncomfortable contradiction at the center of Best Case Scenario: loving someone deeply enough to want forever while knowing that human beings don't get forever.
Maybe the best we can hope for isn't that something never ends.
Maybe it's that when it finally does, neither person has to go alone.
2025
6 × 8 in.
Watercolor and Ink on Paper
Two figures float upward together, surrounded by color and small abstract forms as they make their way toward heaven. They are separate people, but their bodies move in the same direction, almost as though neither one is making the journey without the other.
The idea came from a speech in Rick and Morty that stuck with me. In the Fear Hole at Denny’s, Morty is confronted with the idea that happiness can be frightening because eventually it has to end. You can find the person you love more than anyone else in the world and build an entire life with them, but there is still no version of that happiness that lasts forever. The thought eventually arrives at a dark conclusion: the best-case scenario is that you die at the same time.
That idea sounds incredibly depressing, but I also find something strangely beautiful about it.
If you truly find the person you want to spend your life with, one of you will normally have to experience losing the other. Someone eventually has to be the person left behind. So in an almost impossible best-case scenario, neither person ever has to experience a life without the other. They live together, grow together, die together, and whatever comes afterward, they enter together.
That is what the two figures represent. They aren't falling. They're going somewhere together.
The painting isn't really about wanting to die. It's about wanting a love so complete that even death doesn't create the moment when one person has to continue without the other. Heaven becomes less important as a specific destination and more important as the possibility that there might be somewhere else to go together.
There is an uncomfortable contradiction at the center of Best Case Scenario: loving someone deeply enough to want forever while knowing that human beings don't get forever.
Maybe the best we can hope for isn't that something never ends.
Maybe it's that when it finally does, neither person has to go alone.