"Frankly Said" is something I have been working on for the last few years, with me being, Sam. I started illustrating my dog Frank and my friend's dog Ralph, often with dialogue during the pandemic, which I would send to her as a way of connecting when we couldn’t meet up in person.

These conversations would be about what was on my mind that day— a thought, a concept, an observation about the world. I began sharing them with others close to me. People resonated and engaged with them in a way that was surprising to me. I realized that people whom you would least expect are going through similar things.

These drawings became like a journal to me, a morning ritual, which I shared as I went along. I would often doubt my illustrations, what they looked like, and how I would like them to look— should I be sharing them? My dad, an architect whom I looked up to in how he captured things through lines on a page, said to me that they captured moments in time, and that was the beauty of them. Not perfection. In the process, my drawings changed, evolved, and pondered different things. That was the essence of Frankly Said— moments in time. The world depicted "Frankly".

I hope these make at least one person feel less alone.