The idea for this bittersweet painting came after coming across the following quote, by the writer Jamie Anderson:

Grief, I’ve learned, is really just love. It’s all the love you want to give, but cannot. All that unspent love gathers up in the corners of your eyes, the lump in your throat, and in that hollow part of your chest. Grief is just love with no place to go.

The truth of this touched me deeply, and the wheels began turning to imagine what this could look like. After sketching some ideas I eventually came up with this; the unspent love taking the form of a boat at sea filled with flowers, while the man longingly searches for somewhere to bring his accumulated and overflowing love.