Created in Alameda, California

I Keep Holding On was created during a period of personal and professional transition. In 2001, as the dot-com collapse destabilized my design practice, Jomac Graphic Communications, my wife and I were also preparing for a major life change—leaving California and beginning a new chapter in Hawai‘i.

The composition is layered and restless, built through oil washes, charcoal drawing, and repeated figurative interruptions. Faces surface and dissolve, gestures overlap, and marks drip and reassert themselves, reflecting the effort of maintaining balance while multiple pressures converged. The surface carries a sense of accumulation, as if the image is being held together moment by moment.

A recurring figure within the work is the monkey, which functions as my amakua, or ancestral guardian spirit. During this period, the figure took on a more complicated role. The “bad monkey” emerged as an alter ego—persistent and disruptive—mirroring internal doubt and self-sabotage during a time of uncertainty. Rather than appearing as a single symbol, the monkey is fragmented and woven into the emotional field of the painting.

The phrase I keep holding on came from a time when nothing felt settled. The painting reflects the effort of staying grounded while work, place, and identity were shifting. It marks a moment just before change—when the old was breaking down and the next step was still unknown.