In 2009 I bought a roll of old wall paper from the 1960s or 70s. The back of it had a very nice rough texture, and I used it to practice water coloring on. The paper absorbs a lot of water and gives a muted and aged look to whatever I paint on it.

This red fellow,well, I don't know much about him really. I don't even know his name, though I suspect it is Jacob. He seems to communicate not with words, but with long, long moments of silence. I have taken to setting him down by my bed and keeping him with me all the time so that eventually I can learn to understand the meaning of these silences and what he is trying to tell me.

My friend Takeo says he looks like ET mixed with a frog. ET came to Earth in 1983. If he fell in love with a small tree frog, maybe while Elliot was at school, he could have had some hybrid tadpoles. Today, the hybrid would be 28 years old. I feel like he looks about 27 in this painting...but I haven't seen enough extra terrestrial frog hybrids to know exactly how to tell their age.

The painting below is called "He Lives in your Neighborhood". IT was sold at my first show at Billy Shire Fine Arts in 2009. This one is also on the same wallpaper.