“FUCK CANCER”

For Bob - Porsche, good wine, and telling you exactly how it is thus, the title. Painted in the space between anger and grief, one stroke at a time.

Bob doesn't do soft. If he's razzing you, you're family. If he's giving you a hard time, you've made it. That's how I knew he welcomed me in without a shred of judgment; I was exactly who he wanted for his daughter. He trusted me with his daughter without needing convincing. When I doubted myself, he told me I hadn't failed — and meant it. I've spent most of my life feeling a little lost, a little too moody, not easy to be around. None of that mattered to Bob. To him I was just his artistic son-in-law, someone with a past not unlike his own, who happened to be terrible at golf… for now.

This painting is built from the things he loved without apology — a Porsche, Napa Valley. I painted it while he's fighting stage IV brain cancer, and I painted it exactly how it needed to be painted. Angry and sad at the same time, because he doesn't deserve this. Every stroke carries some of that, and there's no version of this where the hurt doesn't show up in the brushwork.

I feel helpless in his fight for life. So, I painted — It came easily because the grief was already there, waiting to be let out.

Sitting next to him in a golf cart once, I told him I'd finally beat him one of these days. "I'll be dead by then," he said, and took a shot from my flask like the conversation was closed. We laughed. That was Bob — no filter, no bullshit, just love disguised as a punchline.

I'd still like the chance to beat him.

Ethan, B & Company Creative