How A Bomb Exploding Became the Quiet Heart of My Art
Some dates carve themselves into you. June 6, 2011 is one of mine.
I was deployed at FOB Loyalty in Baghdad, just south of Sadr City, as a Company Commander of a Forward Support Company, when the attack happened — the one that wounded me and took the lives of the men beside me. There’s no poetic way to describe the sound of impact, the chaos that follows, or the strange stillness that settles in the moments after as described to me by so many others because I was simply knocked unconscious and woke up blindfolded, tied to a stretcher. The noise around me, the groaning. I'll always remember the groaning. But I was chipper for someone that couldn't get up. I was asking for my people, giving instructions to the next in charge, telling them I would be ok and so would they.
The movement from place to place as I was medivac'd further and further up the line kept my mind quiet for a while. I didn't have to process it all at once. The loss. The grief. The realization that you should have died.
For years, I carried that day like a sealed box. I didn’t open it, but I never put it down. Healing isn’t linear, and it isn’t loud. Sometimes it’s a whisper. Sometimes it’s a brushstroke.
How a Painting Became a Place to Return To
When I began painting Red Birds, Waiting: June 6, 2011, I didn’t set out to make a memorial. I didn’t even realize I was painting June 6th at first. I just knew I was drawn to the image of a single red bird — a symbol that has always meant presence, visitation, and the thin places between worlds.
But as the painting took shape, I felt the familiar ache of that day rising to the surface. Not in a way that overwhelmed me — in a way that asked to be honored.
The red bird became more than a symbol. It became a witness.
A reminder that the people we lose don’t vanish. They wait for us in the ways they can — in memory, in story, in the quiet moments when the world softens enough for us to feel them again.
Painting on reclaimed canvas felt right, too. The surface had a history, a life before this one. It carried its own scars and layers, just like I do. Just like we all do. Covering the old image wasn’t an act of erasure. It was an act of continuation — a way of saying that what came before still matters, even if it’s no longer visible.
Why I Chose to Tell This Story Now
For a long time, I didn’t talk about June 6th, and I was angry at people that wanted to discuss it with me like it was some weird sales pitch or water cooler conversation. I didn’t know how to give it language without reopening wounds that had only just begun to close.
But Red Birds, Waiting changed that.
It gave me a way to speak without speaking. A way to remember without reliving. A way to honor the men who didn’t come home — not with tragedy, but with tenderness.
Art has always been an act of reclamation for me. This painting is no different.
It’s a reminder that grief can become beauty. That memory can become meaning. That survival can become creation.
What I Hope People Feel When They See It
I don’t expect viewers to know the story behind the painting. I don’t need them to.
What I hope they feel is the presence of something — or someone — held with love. I hope they sense the quiet patience of the red birds, the way they stand as a bridge between worlds waiting on their brother to arrive. I hope they feel comforted, even if they don’t know why.
Because Red Birds, Waiting isn’t just about loss. It’s about the belief that nothing meaningful is ever truly gone. It’s about the ones who wait for us, in their own time, in their own way.
And it’s about the day that changed me — not just in the ways that hurt, but in the ways that taught me how to keep going, keep creating, and keep honoring the people who shaped my life in ways they never got to see.