Hip Hip Hooray

Oil on canvas · 40 × 30 in.

A birthday cake becomes a portrait of everything we carry with us.

The eyes painted into each tier are inspired by the tradition of the “lover’s eye”—small, intimate eye miniatures that became fashionable in Europe in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Often exchanged secretly between lovers, these images allowed someone to carry the gaze of a beloved person close to them. They could also become objects of remembrance, including mourning pieces for those who had been lost.

In this painting, I wanted to expand that idea beyond romantic love. The eyes belong to the people and experiences that have shaped us: lovers, ex-lovers, friends, former friends, secrets, mistakes, and the versions of ourselves that existed alongside them. Like candles on a birthday cake, each year marks another passage of time—but the past does not disappear when we grow older.

Instead, it accumulates.

The cake becomes a kind of archive of memory: sweet, celebratory, and slightly unsettling. Each tier holds another layer of a life lived, reminding us that we cannot simply outgrow our past. The people we have loved, lost, betrayed, forgiven, or left behind remain part of us, watching quietly from within the layers of who we have become.

We age, but we never entirely leave ourselves behind.

NOTE: Please note this item comes unframed.