I started getting obsessed with paintings, specifically how they've eroded and yellowed over during the years that's gone by. The Entombment by Michelangelo specifically comes to mind, where the missing details show the yellowing canvas underneath. Or how paintings in general, when unkept, just start turning yellow. When I was working on this, I kept thinking about making an artwork that would surrender itself to that rotting time. This was all digital, of course, so the effect felt cheated, but I wanted to make it as genuine as possible by slightly painting the yellow rust over the artwork little by little, until it felt like it had completely yellowed.

About the piece itself, I created and submitted it for a cover competition with the theme of migration. In the picture, two figures stand together, hugging, touching—lovingly and perhaps, desperately tugging at each other. Migration is essentially a process of change. Of absorption. It's for the bird who leaves its home, it's for the ones who find a new destination, it's for those who have nowhere to go. But what is it that the couple hopes for: that they change what's around them, or that they change to what's around them? In the background, caped men appear. Are they leaving or looking around? Do we let the yellowing time and the fire decide for us what to pick?