There’s a certain shade of pink that tastes like Jack Daniel’s and teenage rebellion. That’s the color I kept reaching for as I painted Bubble Pop…
not just for the way it burned going down, but for the way it made everything feel possible.
This piece is a time capsule. A memory in motion. The early 2000s, when the world was dipped in glitter gloss and denim minis, when Hollister tees clung to our sunburnt skin and Reef flip-flops slapped against suburban sidewalks. It was a time when rules were meant to be bent, then broken.
I learned to sneak out of the house at 12. The rush of adrenaline, the silence of a sleeping house…. how it made me feel powerful. At 15, I drank for the first time. I don’t even remember if I liked it, just that it felt like freedom. Like stepping through a doorway into the adult world, even though we were nowhere near ready.
The purples in this painting bleed down the canvas like the aftermath of those wild nights…sticky eyeliner smudges, bruised knees from falling on gravel, secrets whispered under glow-in-the-dark stars stuck to the ceiling. The drips are intentional. They represent the mess, the hangovers, the emotional spills we didn’t know how to clean up.
Bubble Pop is what it felt like when innocence burst. When we weren’t quite kids anymore, but not yet who we would become. There’s beauty in the chaos of those years, and a lot of pain too. This painting holds both. It’s cotton candy and smoke. Lip gloss and broken glass. Laughter and regret.
If you came of age in that era, maybe you see yourself here too. In the layered brushstrokes. In the flashes of hot pink and moody maroon. In the spaces between who we were and who we’re still trying to become.
This one’s for the ones who grew up too fast but survived to tell the story.
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