Image 1 of 1
Image 1 of 1
Image 1 of 1
Image 1 of 1
2025
Mixed Media on Paper
Original / 1 of 1
Happy Boy looks like an advertisement for the easiest solution to sadness imaginable.
You're sad.
Take a pill.
Now you're happy.
100% HAPPY.
The painting is designed almost like packaging for some ridiculous miracle drug. There are colorful pills, a bottle promising happiness, and two extremely simple faces labeled BEFORE and AFTER. One is sad. One is smiling.
Problem solved.
Except human emotion obviously doesn't work that simply.
The piece plays with the idea of the “happy pill”—the way medication and drugs can sometimes be reduced in conversation to the idea that you take something when you're unhappy and suddenly become happy. The painting intentionally makes that transformation look absurdly easy.
Sad face. Pill. Happy face.
But there's another material in this piece that completely changes it for me.
The tiny reddish-brown marks scattered across the artwork are my actual dried blood.
At the time, I had coughed blood, and some of it ended up becoming part of the piece. Over time it dried, darkened, and became these tiny marks across an otherwise bright, cartoonish advertisement for happiness.
I kept it there intentionally.
That creates this strange contradiction I love about the piece. Everything about Happy Boy is trying to convince you that happiness can be packaged, swallowed, and guaranteed.
Meanwhile, actual evidence that something was physically wrong with me is sitting directly on the paper.
The cheerful colors don't remove it.
The smile doesn't remove it.
The words 100% HAPPY don't remove it.
It's still there.
And I think that's what makes the piece feel much more like me than if it were simply a joke about pills. I tend to present myself as a happy person. I joke around. I like making other people laugh. I create ridiculous characters and stupid ideas because they genuinely make me happy.
But happiness doesn't mean nothing else is happening underneath.
Sometimes the happiest-looking thing in the room can still have blood on it.
Happy Boy isn't saying happiness is fake. It's saying happiness is more complicated than a before-and-after picture.
You can't always see what somebody is carrying just because they're smiling.
And unfortunately, there isn't a pill labeled 100% HAPPY.
If there were, I probably would have drawn better packaging for it.
2025
Mixed Media on Paper
Original / 1 of 1
Happy Boy looks like an advertisement for the easiest solution to sadness imaginable.
You're sad.
Take a pill.
Now you're happy.
100% HAPPY.
The painting is designed almost like packaging for some ridiculous miracle drug. There are colorful pills, a bottle promising happiness, and two extremely simple faces labeled BEFORE and AFTER. One is sad. One is smiling.
Problem solved.
Except human emotion obviously doesn't work that simply.
The piece plays with the idea of the “happy pill”—the way medication and drugs can sometimes be reduced in conversation to the idea that you take something when you're unhappy and suddenly become happy. The painting intentionally makes that transformation look absurdly easy.
Sad face. Pill. Happy face.
But there's another material in this piece that completely changes it for me.
The tiny reddish-brown marks scattered across the artwork are my actual dried blood.
At the time, I had coughed blood, and some of it ended up becoming part of the piece. Over time it dried, darkened, and became these tiny marks across an otherwise bright, cartoonish advertisement for happiness.
I kept it there intentionally.
That creates this strange contradiction I love about the piece. Everything about Happy Boy is trying to convince you that happiness can be packaged, swallowed, and guaranteed.
Meanwhile, actual evidence that something was physically wrong with me is sitting directly on the paper.
The cheerful colors don't remove it.
The smile doesn't remove it.
The words 100% HAPPY don't remove it.
It's still there.
And I think that's what makes the piece feel much more like me than if it were simply a joke about pills. I tend to present myself as a happy person. I joke around. I like making other people laugh. I create ridiculous characters and stupid ideas because they genuinely make me happy.
But happiness doesn't mean nothing else is happening underneath.
Sometimes the happiest-looking thing in the room can still have blood on it.
Happy Boy isn't saying happiness is fake. It's saying happiness is more complicated than a before-and-after picture.
You can't always see what somebody is carrying just because they're smiling.
And unfortunately, there isn't a pill labeled 100% HAPPY.
If there were, I probably would have drawn better packaging for it.