These paintings represent several things to me, and the subjects are part real, part imaginary.

The title Skin Horse is an allusion to the book The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams. In the book, truth and trauma are inseparable in the journey from illusion to reality. The toy rabbit begins pristine, untouched by life, and is worn down by love -- tender and ruthless. Softness is stripped down. His transformation is painful; a slow erosion of his former self.

It is the character of the Skin Horse who introduces the rabbit to the truth that becoming real means enduring love, and life's gradual wear; about being remade through devotion and suffering. And while this sentiment is beautiful and poignant, the world is cruel to what is worn and aged. The boy to whom the toy rabbit belongs moves on, the rabbit is discarded -- left to decay under the weight of memories. This final trauma is perhaps the price of love, the mark of something lived-in, and deeply felt. Just when loss seems absolute, "magic" intervenes—not restoring the rabbit to what he was, but making him into something new altogether. The rabbit is free.

To many, rabbits symbolize rebirth and springtime. For about two years, it felt like I was encountering rabbits everywhere. I'd see one or two hopping around outside with great frequency. It was equally comforting as it was an eerie reminder of my childhood when I had rabbits as pets. In my mind, I see my childhood as a simpler time, and the rabbits almost as something "before it all went wrong. " The imagery of a rabbit holding onto the physical body though, is an indication that these memories still keep their claws dug into us. Entities from our past cling to our perimeter. Even the positive memories are gateways to unrealized things. The rabbit's true form does not lie in how he once looked or the trauma that unmade him but in the love that reshaped him.

Physical painting is 3 x 3 feet oil on canvas. Digital image is 2,705 x 2,705 px.