Humpty

Description

Once a nursery rhyme, now a reckoning.

Humpty sits heavy on the edge of the wall—round, blue, and impossibly tired. His smile is soft, almost apologetic, as though he has already accepted what comes next. A red heart cracks against his chest, fragile and exposed, beating with effort rather than hope.

The landscape is deceptively gentle. Green fields bloom with small, indifferent flowers. A castle stands in the distance, unreachable. The wall winds away behind him like a path already traveled, already closed. Beneath his feet, the ground stains red—proof that the fall has begun long before the body follows.

Beside him rests the letter. Written plainly, painfully, it is not a goodbye but an explanation—an attempt to make sense of the unbearable weight of being broken and asked, endlessly, to be whole again. All the king’s horses, all the king’s men were never enough.

Painted in 2010, this piece confronts the quiet exhaustion of existing as something damaged in a world that demands repair. It is a story about fracture, failure, and the loneliness of being reduced to a rhyme when the pain is real.

This is not a fairy tale.
It is the moment after hope has been rewritten too many times.