I Don’t Know… But It’s Gonna Cost an Arm and a Leg

2019

Triptych on found shelving (spray paint, acrylic, Mixed Media)

48 x 57

$6000

Sometimes art doesn’t come from concept. It comes from necessity. From the back of a barn. From a moment when you’re broke, driven, and desperate to create. This piece didn’t start with a message-but it ended up saying more than most art ever dares to.

The left panel repeats like a chant:

“LOOK MOM I CAN FLY.”

Over and over, raw and childlike. It’s triumphant and heartbreaking all at once. The voice of someone who came from nothing, shouting into the void, hoping someone’s listening-someone who once believed in you when no one else did. The repetition makes it sacred. Like a prayer. Like a spell.

The center panel is the skull. The core. The cost. Painted over a background of deep mustard and wine-red, it feels like a relic pulled out of a dream-or a nightmare. It’s the body without flesh, the self stripped down to what survives. There’s something elegant about it, but also confrontational. It dares you to ask what’s left when you give everything.

The right panel gives you the punchline: a skeleton’s foot and arm, floating in abstraction.

You literally gave up an arm and a leg to make it here. And now? Here it is. On display.

It’s clever. It’s brutal. It’s real.

So yes, when they ask, “What does it mean?”

—you say:

“I don’t know… but it’s gonna cost an arm and a leg.”

But here’s the truth underneath the joke:

This piece is about sacrifice. About the journey. About making something valuable out of scraps.

It’s about how even when you don’t have a canvas, you still have a voice.

And when you’re bold enough to paint with no plan-sometimes, that’s when the truth shows up.

This piece didn’t need a plan.

It needed you.