“Hold On:” inside the studio

I know I often say that I don’t like to explain my artwork or impose explicit narratives onto it. But Hold On has a context that would almost feel disrespectful to the viewer if I left it unsaid.

At least, that’s what I’ll tell myself.

The early “sketches” for this piece were first laid down nearly thirty years ago, when my brain suddenly experienced the physiology that accompanied losing the sight in one eye. Since then, more central causes have been to blame.

Nevertheless, being seasick on solid ground sucks.

Here, I tried to map the emotion and sensation—not the literal image—of vertigo onto canvas. I didn’t set out to make this painting. Instead, I cooperated with the moment when it presented itself.

In late July and early August of 2026, I stupidly overlapped several taxing, neurologically challenging medical procedures. All of them are necessary to manage my illness, but stacking them so closely together certainly was not. Like a numbskull, I packed my schedule with several stressful medical appointments within a span of seventy-two hours. I restarted a rigorous daily physical-therapy program, underwent my annual fifty-minute brain MRI, and followed it the next day with my twice-yearly disease-management therapy infusion.

I’m deeply grateful for the benefits of modern medical treatment and for the opportunity to fight my illness. But a “combo platter” schedule like this has specific, temporary consequences. For me, the result was a five-day bout of mild-to-moderate vertigo.

I have experienced severe vertigo earlier in my life; this was not quite that. However, it vividly recalled elements of those earlier episodes. This latest bout felt like a direct call to translate the condition into a painting.

Using whatever materials I had on hand, I planted myself on the floor. Being low down was the only way I could safely cover the three-foot canvas while steadying myself against the waves of instability and disorientation.

First, I wanted to build a background that felt steady but not solid—a field that did not continue uninterrupted from edge to edge. The deep pool of navy is actually composed of raw sienna and primary magenta, creating a chromatic field that teases the eye and evades comprehension. It’s not dark blue. It’s not magenta. You can’t count on much.

Over that background, I first added the unflinching orange center of gravity. From there, I applied a series of circular forms in white. I then unevenly scraped and wiped through them with a metal straightedge, pulling the paint toward the border of that single focal point: the orange loop.

The aim was to convey a sense of uneasy motion—a falling, semisolid form that maintains a visual lock on a fixed point. This is exactly what my brain tries to do to orient my body when my other senses are sending mixed signals.

Hold On is a direction, a description, and an aspiration. The title also borrows a line from R.E.M.’s “Losing My Religion,” a song that conjures a similar feeling to the one I was trying to capture here.

I don’t know exactly how medical textbooks describe vertigo, and I know this image is merely a snapshot of one person’s experience. But creating this unstable scene under the influence of that specific flavor of vertigo provides a visual record of an event that words alone cannot fully express

Here’s a few shots taken during the process:

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