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What is different about this painting, in comparison to my other pieces? There is an object protruding from the canvas surface. It was an accident, but seemed to fit well, color-wise and line-wise, so I decided to leave it there. Painting is often about the accidental treasures, that emerge without too much thinking, and to me this was one of those moments. I wanted to splash an expressive mark of paint onto the canvas, but the brush slipped out of my hand, flipped midair, and didn’t bounce off of the canvas, but...became apart of it. The brush hung there, bobbing up and down from the initial shock of wood suddenly meeting canvas, but to my eyes it seemed to have found its place. Why not leave the tool that creates the painting, as a souvenir from the studio? The paint brush is very much the painter’s wand that creates their alchemic world....and so emerged Alchemic Souvenir.