Oil & Gouache on Paper, 10 x 10cm individually, including Consumer Electronics Packaging, 30 x 42cm, 2025, €125 each unframed, €250 for the pair unframed, €275 for the pair including packaging.

‘I’ve resolved to paint more animals this year. They are more forgiving than humans. It was only after I completed these small sketches that I learned that Aesop handed down a fable to us about the Lion and the Ass. We are all both of these spirits, and others. So you might call this a self-portrait. Although while painting this I was thinking about my sister-in-law’s donkey Billy, now sadly no longer with us.

’There’s a beautiful monument in London, one of my favorites, to commemorate animals in war. That’s the pinnacle of civilization if you ask me, remembering publicly all our fellow travelers. I’d like to see more monuments like this, and fewer statues of saber-rattling men of state. These two paintings were going to be much larger, 60x80cm or thereabouts. Then I found another intriguing box in the street next to the recycling bins. This accidental framing seemed obvious somehow.’

Romas was born in Rome in 1970. He was raised in the United States, and is currently living and working in Porto.