Struan Teague

About Louis Fratino 

born 1993, Maryland. Lives and works in Baltimore. I am seven or nine years old in one of my paintings. I paint myself as a grown man. The painting depicts my brother riding over me on his Haro BMX bicycle. It is not my best painting, but it is relevant because it is the kind of situation so unfortunate and funny, I needed to paint it. I re- member the tire tread on my stomach. It felt like my stomach was a turning bucket full of water, emptied out. My lungs dump out the air I sucked in moments before closing my eyes in anticipa- tion of my brother’s “cool trick”. Misled, I curl up like an abandoned cicada shell and smell Ivan the black cat’s urine that hangs suspiciously on the dandelion puffs around my face. I am wearing my very red Spiderman t-shirt. The black webbing detail raises up bumpy and weird on my fin- gers. Who rides over their brother on a bicycle? Has a dozen or so years been generous enough to make that memory funny? I remember feeling proud that my brother had run over me on his bike. I cried obviously, but even now I tell the story. 

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