The Feast Must Go On

Year | 2025

Medium | Acrylic gouache on canvas

Size | 14.7 W x 10.7 H in

Additional Details | “The Feast Must Go On” is a diagram of denial: a ritual kept perfectly intact even as the table itself is being taken. The image grows out of a recurring memory of family meetings my grandfather would summon in the name of urgent company “crises,” only for the room to collapse into a kind of deafening quiet. In the painting, a wet, many-armed creature pushes in from the center, creeping over plates and cutlery, spreading into the space where conversation should be. No one looks up. No one interrupts the meal. Faces disappear beneath the tablecloth, as if etiquette could function as a blindfold. The creature stands in for the problem everyone recognizes but refuses to name, and for the strange comfort that comes from pretending that if the ritual stays intact, the situation will stay contained.