Drink ups mean Thirteen 🃏, UB40 playing and boxes of Alcohol. Drink ups brings our people together, beautiful things about it, but this paintings addressing the elephant in the room, Daddy issues.

This is me painting at that part of the night when I push my seat a lil back, deep breath and observe the room.

I see the “tough act” brothers…usual suspects.
I notice the “tough act” brothers slowly begin to drop that guard and open up as the alcohol creeps up. They begin to speak on their emotions, start dishing out Uncle talks, sometimes cry, and speak on their issues they face in reality. Its as if they an entirely different person drunk you know…

Wake up the next day and its all gone, they back to their normal “tough act” self, emotional expression is nowhere to be found…. And we just accept this and move on like their aint no damn issue with this?

Like that aint a brother clearly hurting huh. A brother scared to open up rooted in the absent relationship with their Fathers.

Remember the amount of times as kids we had to carry our Fathers, Uncles onto a bed after drinking multiple boxes themselves late at night. Bro they would drink the entire night sitting in silence - singing - crying - talking to themselves and repeat…as a kid im thinking this is normal.

Not realising as I get older how broken they are. Broken to the point where their absence means we coined the term “drink up” and repeated the issues. We sit at these damn drink up tables across each other every weekend allowing the cycle to continue.

Next generation aint getting any younger and I see us passing this cultured behaviour onto them. I/We have Daddy issues and we gotta accept and address it bro.

Shit Im tryna take Russel to Paradise falls 🎈with a clear conscious knowing i spoke on real shit while I was here.

And yeah a classic drink up song was appropriate on this reel, had to situate ya’ll appropriately when u see this painting