"whatever" is approximately 12 X 12 inches, oils painted on velvet-covered, recycled plywood. The painting is signed "B.B.", and it is finished in a heavy, black painted frame, which is hand-crafted from recycled wood. "Whatever" depicts my wife, Kathy, and I when we were first married 18 months ago, in mid 2005. In interpreting Kathy's bi-polar disorder, I portrayed her (and our puppy, Daisy) lounging on our couch while I wait from behind. Above us are Kathy's reflections of our lives together--reflections that are products, for the most part, of one emotional episode or reaction after another. Using velvet for this composition turned out to be a very fortunate choice. Velvet is a very difficult surface to paint on, but for "whatever", it allowed for rich, multi-colored and multi-layered texture in the upper half of the painting, while allowing shadows to fade into the flatness of the lower half. "whatever" was the first in a series of four paintings on velvet I completed in 2005.