Painted for a friend almost as a joke, I was at the time very under the influence of a comic book and MTV cartoon called The Maxx. The artist used a marvelous techique of blocking and heavy angular black shapes to completely quantify and contain the bright colours of the frames, and that appealed to me so much that I thought I would break out of my mold.

Which I did, to a small extent. *lol* The bedroom is still a prop posed in a room, with the corner of two walls and the floor visible, and the painting style is still very much mine, so not a lot of boundary stretching going on there, but it was still a very fun painting to do.

For the well-read amongst you, you will recognise both the title and the theme of the painting from the story of the same name by Franz Kafka. Shall I say "the only human character" in the book, Blumfeld, undergoes a maddening interlude with two children's balls, which are possessed of their own minds. The shuffling, elderly Blumfeld for me matches how I feel this friend of mine is going to end up; alone, muttering, and decrepit, beset by strange occurances around and over, and I presnted this painting to him because of it.

He accepted with very good grace.