Until the Lights Go Out: Life Is a Limited Edition

Until the Lights Go Out is a skeleton throwing itself a party, and I mean that literally. There is cake, there are balloons, and there is a sign.

What is going on in the picture

A flamingo skeleton stands on one leg against a hot pink sky. A small blue bear in a top hat rides on its ribcage, either as a friend or as a passenger, I have never fully decided. There is a rainbow layer cake with a lit candle, a bundle of balloons, bones lying in the grass, bees, confetti, and a skull off to the right that has also been given a hat, because leaving it out would have been rude.

The painting says it out loud

I do not usually write inside my paintings. In this one I did it twice. One sign reads life is a limited edition. The other, propped against the cake, reads I'll celebrate until the lights go out.

That is the whole thought. Not: everything ends, how sad. More like: everything ends, so the cake is not optional.

A skeleton does not have to be spooky

Skeletons in art usually get handed one of two jobs. Scary, or sad. This one is the host. It is dressed for the occasion, it has guests, and it is having a considerably better evening than most of the living.

That is also why the piece still works on a wall in June. The shapes are Halloween, the content is a birthday. Nothing about it belongs in a box in the attic on the first of November.

Where the bones come from

Painters have been putting skulls next to beautiful things for a very long time, and I am not the first to notice it makes the beautiful thing more interesting. I went through that tradition, and why my strawberries keep finding skulls, in Memento Mori and Vanitas Art. Until the Lights Go Out sits at the cheerful end of that shelf.

The original is gone, the rest is not

The original was 15 × 15 cm / 5.91 × 5.91 in, acrylic and alcohol markers on a wood panel, and it has found its home. Everything else about this one I can keep making:

• The hand-signed print, 21 × 21 cm / 8.27 × 8.27 in, printed and signed in my studio and embossed with my artist stamp, 35 euro.
• The larger wall art print, produced by my print partner as close to you as possible.
• The digital download for 9,90 euro, printed by you at whatever size your frame happens to be.
• And a free phone wallpaper, if you just want the flamingo on your lock screen.

If you would rather build a whole corner around it than hang it on its own, I put a few pieces together in how to decorate for Halloween without a single plastic skeleton.

Light the candle. It is a limited edition.