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chùi

@seanccroberts.bsky.social

260 followers 250 following 890 posts

Poems, language, mountains, data. Mock scientist (I used to be a real scientist).

I hate LLMs like Kendrick hates Drake.

Formally of Texas, now in 🇫🇷, which is by some measures somewhat bigger.

Coauthor @paintree.art / www.paintree.art

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chùi

@seanccroberts.bsky.social

Artists, quote with something silly!

A painting of a heart with baroque looking rays of light radiating out from it, and fire coming from the aorta on top. It looks kinda like a heart. Like a weird heart. No it's not a heart, it's a butt. The sacred butt of jesus.

February 12, 2026 at 8:37 PM

chùi

@seanccroberts.bsky.social

Some of the finished pieces for PAINTREE (part 6). Don't squint too hard, the poems are replicated in the alt text haha.

Acrylic and print on board. Some pieces have been sold, some are available. DM me if interested, will ship internationally.

#artsky #skypoem #paintree

A painting of a person in a dark space. They are a lit candle, and are resting in a puddle of wax, with a placid expression. Around the painting is written the following text:

Quarrelling dervish

I tried once to touch the sun
and broke, my body and mind melting
too close to the source. Another almighty
test that I, like Abraham, failed.

I fell into the labyrinth to convalesce.
My body healed and my mind wandered
those walls, taking every left turn until I found
the hollow at its core. Then, I could see.

To burn brighter needn't mean half a life.
Turn over, find another wick, and ignite it.
The melting wax may fall
and build up on both ends.

A paradox, you say?
Yes, that's right.
I prove my humanity
by my contradictions.

18x36cm

A painting of a person leaping out of a plain, brown space, into a chaotic mess of colors, blending into all the curves (or maybe, the same process in reverse). The following text is written around it:

Thanksgiving Eve

Like an addict, with immense effort,
I extract myself from family's chaos.
I build a temple of calm and hope
its gravity will, at length, rescue me.

Or I escape my stifling home,
tuck and roll through broken glass
toward freedom. The city lights shine
for me like burnished youth.

Or, broken on the wheel of the world,
I retreat to easy familiarity.
There are rules and old fights
but they are worn down like old church steps.

Or I want all these things and more.
The only story without complication
is an obituary. I break and mend,
am distorted and still shine.

39x31cm

A painting of a goose confidently stepping free of its bonds and walking outdoors, into the misty rainbow mountains, into the setting sun, with the following text around it:

Unwinding

We're like foie gras geese,
force-fed information
except we control the hose.
We can walk away.

I did it. Cut the cord and walked.
I unwound the threads that held me
and followed them out of the labyrinth,
through the door the spider held for me.

Outside. I re-wild. I walk into misty hills.
I watch the sun set for the first time in ages
and hold faith
that it will rise again.

61x40.5cm

February 11, 2026 at 10:39 PM

chùi

@seanccroberts.bsky.social

Some of the finished pieces for PAINTREE (part 5). Don't squint too hard, the poems are replicated in the alt text haha.

Acrylic and print on board. Some pieces have been sold, some are available. DM me if interested, will ship internationally.

#artsky #skypoem #paintree

A painting of an eye, green, with vines growing around it and the following text written around it:

Renunciation

We grow best as prairies.
Integrated tangles that pull community
in every direction.
Competing for the sun's gold, yes,
but under the surface we enrich
the soil, planting the next season's seeds.

You think we consume without thought.
You plow us into segregated rows,
tell us to rely on synthetic wards
while your mice in trousers rob our grain,
and think our faces will always turn to you
as if you were the center of the universe.

We are watching you
and weighing judgement.
We may lack coordination
but our tender shoots grow
inexorably
inescapably
in their masses
along your length
around your cruel mouth
toward your delicate eyes,
until you blink.

30x18cm

A painting of a raised hand in purple mist, with the following poem written around it:

Dutch tears

A citizen mother and child
are separated and detained
for hours, for speaking Spanish
in a public park.
That could have been me.

A researcher complained
over text about the suicidal
destruction of science and got
deported without saying a word.
That could have been me.

A protesting priest
holds up his hands in supplication
and takes a pepper ball
to the head.
That could have been me.

Activists are threatened
with arrest for shouting legal defense
strategy to migrants as they
are disappeared.
That could have been me.

The undesirables and degenerates are made
to register themselves. Hundreds,
thousands, who could have passed for fash
put themselves on every list.
That could have been me.

People hide their neighbors
in attics for days, for months, for years.
Some are caught and unpersoned, but
the rest are an ark of community.
That could have been me.

All the citizens are rounded up in the square.
Who threw the sabot into the machine?
the men with guns bleat at us.
I raise my hand, as do we all. We say -
That could have been me.

20x40cm

A painting of a person sitting on the floor with enormous, luxurious, flowing hair, and a large goldfish swimming in it, and the following text written around it:

Knocking to find a door while drifting inward with every step

I swim in my head, a bowl too small.
I turn and turn, my spine grows curved,
to echo the walls that lead nowhere.

I swim faster to try to hasten
the process and find the way out.
I will speedrun discomfort.
The space constricts to compensate.

I despair. How can I help anyone,
how can I save anyone else
if I can't even save myself?

Bereft of direction, I stall.
Without design, I rest

and wake to the answer:
then I will have to save myself.
The walls in my head begin to bloom.

35x20cm

February 7, 2026 at 10:44 PM

chùi

@seanccroberts.bsky.social

Some of the finished pieces for PAINTREE (part 4). Don't squint too hard, the poems are replicated in the alt text haha.

Acrylic and print on board. Some pieces have been sold, some are available. DM me if interested, will ship internationally.

#artsky #skypoem #paintree

A painting of a close-up of two people holding hands, with tiny rainclouds around them, and a full field of wheat rustling in the wind, and the following text around it:

Summer

Sweet black clouds blow in
over the tall heads
of grain.

We seize the moment, you and I,
to gather berries, our fingers
stained and wet.

We wash in the river, and downstream
we see bears, napping now among the fish,
having eaten too many.

We stay up past the sun,
and by the light of cooling embers,
hold hands and wish

for nothing else.

25x18cm

A painting of a rainbow snail with an infinite shell, and the following text written around it:

Fatigue

Anything that can't
go on forever
won't.

It feels like a crisis
until you burn out
the part that worries.

When babies grow up,
old dreamcatchers, too full,
are buried,

and while their former owners sleep
grow into rainbow snails
whose shells spiral outward, not in.

60x60cm

A painting of a person sitting on top of rippling water, holding smoke in their hand, with the following text around it:

A cloth to cover the obsidian edges of the centuries

In the boat of myself on this ancient river,
I paddle
then panic
as genteel swells turn to rapids.

The waves soar above my head
and block my vision, foam
surrounds and towers, I am blocked,
I am enclosed and cut off

The stream bends and passes
through a city.
The crush subsides
beneath the monuments.

A fire polarizes the city.
The roofs disagree
and all burn the same way,
but not all catch.

Stone houses a hundred years old stand dark.
An old palace’s moat keeps it serene.
The cathedral has burned a dozen times and been rebuilt.
Ancestral ruins can burn no more.

I wear the city's history like a cloak
and conjure a fog to put out every spark
before it can reach me.
Battered by the waves I gasp, but do not sink

and ride on toward time's great ocean.

70x70cm

A painting of a rainbow bird perched on a branch, melting or raining itself, before a skyfull of clouds, with the following text written around it in the form of a cage:

Sing

Reading only through windows fogs my impressions.
I forget how kind my neighbors are.

I go down to the street and see gifts change hands.
The lonely find each other and fill each other’s hearts.

Some few of those sad foggy voices are real.
They are frightened by collaboration.

They set fire to the parliament and try to blame us.
We put it out by bleeding rainbows.

We are promised cages
and begin to sing in advance.

60x67cm

February 6, 2026 at 9:06 PM

chùi

@seanccroberts.bsky.social

Some of the finished pieces for PAINTREE (part 3). Don't squint too hard, the poems are replicated in the alt text haha.

Acrylic and print on board. Some pieces have been sold, some are available. DM me if interested, will ship internationally.

#artsky #skypoem #paintree

A painting of a gold fish flying high among the clouds, with the following poem written around it:

Breathless

It's easy enough to take the firmament
for granted. If you thought
you could lose it
you might go crazy.

Leaving home is like that.
You feel freer than a cloud,
surprised at every turn,
and often bitter solitude

in spite of the new colors around you.
Familiarity is constraining,
but is also a scaffold.
Quite contrary, but then again

what might a fish say if
cast into the air?

He might say, I can’t breathe!

He might say, I can fly!

A painting of a weird little guy with apparently bulging eyes and a rictus grimace, sitting on a tuft of grass with their feet in the bright water, and the following text written around it:

Contain, constrain, refrain

You might think to make yourself small.
They’ll make you feel ashamed
for sharing colorful ideas.

But when the rains begin to fall,
they’ll come asking for you.

You might feel the need to stay silent.
Trust is a luxury and yours
has been spent
on lottery tickets for someone else.

But when the rains fall
and the floodwaters begin to roll in,
they’ll come asking for you.

You might have to hide.
Draw little eyes on ping pong balls
so they think you never sleep
and draw a little mouth
that makes the same sounds they do.

But when the rains fall
and the floodwaters roll in
and the sea begins to lick at their feet,
they’ll come asking for you.

You might feel you need to run.
That things aren’t tolerable
any longer and it’s better to take
a chance on parts unknown
than to risk another minute
on this freight train ouroborus.

And when the rains fall
and the floodwaters roll in
and the sea swallows them
and they begin to feel the weight
of their chains in the icy depths,
they’ll wonder
how you could have forsaken them.

A painting of a human heart with greenery sprouting from all the arteries, with the following text written around it:

deletun zabaanetun-e, zabaanetun shehr-e | your heart is your language, your language is a poem

My soul. I say. How is your health?
It is not raining rain, you reply.

My heart is restless, you say.
Mine too, I admit. I have been blue all day.

Did your heart not want peace? you ask.
The heart did, I say, the mouth wanted something else.

We don’t send our best to lead us, I say.
From heart to heart, there is a path, you agree.

I am without words. I conclude:
I hope that this will end without more suffering.

May my place be green, you say.
May my place be green, I respond.

A painting of a scorpion in a jam jar. The interior of the jar is dark, outside it is bright and surrounded by a rainbow. The following text is written around it:

Jar

Is evil something inevitable?
Something that must have its time,
like the darkness of the moon?

There will always be evil doers.
Power will always have its own gravity.
Some will always take lucre to tolerate horror.

The arc of the universe appears to bend
toward abundance. But that same can mask
totalizing power until it's too late to overcome.

And yet, this has happened before.
And been defeated before.
Evil, like a candle in a jar, strangles itself.

We know we can do better.
We see others do better, as they see us
doing better.

And so
inevitably
we do

the work
the time
the struggle
the tears
the association
the building

necessary
to bend history
toward justice -

to give evil a smaller jar.

January 31, 2026 at 9:04 PM

chùi

@seanccroberts.bsky.social

Some of the finished pieces for PAINTREE (part 2). Don't squint too hard, the poems are replicated in the alt text haha.

Acrylic and print on board. Some pieces have been sold, some are available. DM me, will ship internationally.

#artsky #skypoem #paintree

A painting of an eye with a blue flower covering/duplicating the iris, with the following text written around it:

Iris

Van Gogh retired from the world
and painted flowers, not as they were
but as he saw them. In families,
in aching color, whole even when broken.

The world saw something else in those
pictures, and in him. Funny people
paint those funny pictures.
Don't look too close.

I'm afraid of being seen.
Of becoming a portrait on someone's wall
that I don't recognize. Or worst of all,
being shown a mirror.

I plan and analyze and overthink
so that I will never be caught
being human.

And yet when I see van Gogh's irises,
I don't see flowers, I see a brain -
raw, disordered, broken, different,
beautiful, powerful.

A picture a person with their eyes closed and face tilted up, clouds around their head, and colorful houses in those clouds, with the following text written around it:

Dwelling

You can never step in the same river twice.
We cannot go home but that doesn't mean
we can't see it, far downstream.

When this fever breaks
we will build a new home,
one of stone and brick and hands.

I walk through these dark woods
with my head in the clouds,
dreaming of home.

A small house on top of a bright hill, with the door and windows open and clouds entering or exiting through them, with the following text written around it:

Game

Sometimes I read too many abstractions
and the house fills with thunderheads.
You force me outside into the blue and green
and I remember that bad news needn't eclipse.

—

Sometimes the street fills with smoke
and we usher friends, strangers in.
We draw the curtains and, maybe quietly,
pour the wine, play a game.

A painting of a very close up of a person's face, submerged up to the eyes in water, the eyes welling with tears and inside the left eye a small shadow walking. The following text is written around it:

Magician

I am a magician.

I can do impossible things.

I can watch for an eternity
without blinking.

I can walk on water,
at great personal cost.

I can tell the truth,
even when friends plug their ears
so that all they hear me shout is
‘wolf, wolf.’

January 30, 2026 at 10:01 PM

chùi

@seanccroberts.bsky.social

Some of the finished pieces for PAINTREE. Don't squint too hard, the poems are replicated in the alt text haha.

Acrylic and print on board. Some pieces have been sold, some are available. DM me, will ship internationally.

#artsky #skypoem #paintree

A painting of a small person shielding a seedling against the night, the gaze of the wind, the stars, and nebulae, with a poem written around it:

New year

Most new years are white, blank Januarys -
a chance for change and new beginning.

On this year’s horizon, instead of blanketing snowclouds,
dark thunderheads. Harbingers of the flood.

The river will fill. And the lakes, and the ocean.
We’re so used to building dams against the rising tides

that when they break and we are caught in
history’s currents we rifle for footing

and try to hold back the waters with our hands
instead of remembering that we can swim.

Everything will not survive.
But some things will.

Everyone will not see the future.
But most of us will

and we will have to dream it.

And under the snow
and rain
and water
and mud
and silt
and shit
and hate
and winds
and dead earth
and fires of change

there is, under all that, a new year,
where small things will happen

small troubles, and small joys,
small enough for a human to hold,

and above all of that, at night, while
our worried brains are calmed,

the fixed stars will spin
as they always have.

36x24cm

A painting of a person leaning back on the floor, watching as sheets of paper fly out a hole in the wall into the night, with a poem written around it:

Bright flowers in winter

I will not buy dark flowers until the wake is announced.
I will sing bright songs and stoke the fire.

I will write stories in green and give them away
and my friends will read them to their friends.

I will paint the ceiling in pastel and neon and
we will spin beneath it late until we fall down laughing.

While watching for bitter torches in the long night
I will bake apples and scatter incense and magnesium

so that if the house should be burned down
it will shine and smell like cinnamon.

I will not obey in advance;
and I will not surrender my joy.

31x31cm

A painting of a person with lavender blooming of top of their head, with the a poem written around it:

Wild lavender

In the low fingers
of the Alps, lavender grows,
fragrance among vines.n.

It’s not the only thing
that flourishes in the spare
roughs of the maquis.

But by human hands
the blooms are reared, and come to
symbolize the land.
_______

I too have summer
and winter thoughts forever
budding in my head.

I try to train them
like bonsai. On the best days
my summer garden

grows tall and pulls me
straight up to the soft blue sky,
frost beneath my toes.
_______

In Texas there is
no want for French lavender.
It grows in gravel

in our own gorgeous
wastelands. Autochthonous ward
against scorpions

and other household
demons, dried and stored for this
latest queer winter.

36x18cm

A painting of a hand growing branches, with a poem written around it:

Adapt

Enclosed, uprooted,
and left hungry,
I will find my own way.

I reach to the sun and
create
my own sustenance.

Once I've had enough,
I put down roots
and share with my neighbors.

18x25cm

January 29, 2026 at 12:32 AM

chùi

@seanccroberts.bsky.social

Your last meme saved is your moral philosophy.

Yeah extremely accurate

Emperor Palpatine turns to Anakin Skywalker and asks him "did u ever hear the tragedy of the Western Australia time zones?"

January 22, 2026 at 4:51 PM

chùi

@seanccroberts.bsky.social

Finished!! I was just going to distress these printouts with some coffee but i started seeing structures and got a little carried away haha. 108 of these in 3 days for the PAINTREE vernissage. See you Friday in #Paris!!

#artsky #skypoem #france #hopescrolling #paintree

A drawing in coffee on a poem. A man with great effort topples some very high pillars

A drawing in coffee on a poem. A femme figure is being spaghettified into a black hole, a consequence of contemplating Thanksgiving

A drawing in coffee on a poem. There's some weird parenthetical abstract shapes, and a unicorn.

A drawing in coffee on a poem. Three sharp fire-hardened yew staves point downwards at an angle, saying fuck fascism without actually using those words

January 20, 2026 at 12:34 AM

chùi

@seanccroberts.bsky.social

I also contain multitudes today

A monkey looking at his cell phone in a bit spring. He closes his eyes in disgust.

Indiana Jones doing that thing where back in the day when there used to be nazis if he saw one he would punch them

A dracula rolling up the curtain and wounded, probably mortally, by the rising sun. Except the sun is a baby

January 19, 2026 at 12:37 AM

chùi

@seanccroberts.bsky.social

The books are here!!!

On se voit pour le vernissage le 23, vendredi prochain ! See you next Friday the 23rd in #paris for the expo open!

#paintree #artsky #skypoem #france #booksky

January 15, 2026 at 12:00 AM

chùi

@seanccroberts.bsky.social

A newspaper cartoon from the end of the Spanish-American war in 1898, boasting the span of the American Empire (without using that word). An eagle stretching from Puerto Rico to the Philippines, and the title "ten thousand miles from tip to tip"

January 6, 2026 at 6:54 PM

chùi

@seanccroberts.bsky.social

Hello #artsky, #skypoem, #booksky, associated skies,

Our project PAINTREE is complete and we will show selected works as well as books at Caverne d'Art&Miss in Paris from 23 jan to 13 feb. Dana and I have poured our whole souls into this for a year and we're real proud of the result. Come say hi!

Flyer for PAINTREE exhibition, 23 jan - 13 feb at galerie la caverne d'art&miss, 23-25 rue saint paul, paris france

January 4, 2026 at 3:04 PM

chùi

@seanccroberts.bsky.social

Show me how you draw / paint horses 🐎

Happy Year of the Horse, folks 💙
✨

(Not quite a horse but it is sort of equine and i am hoping to have this energy in 2026)

A colassal red bull menaces a white unicorn on a windswept landscape

January 1, 2026 at 12:01 PM

chùi

@seanccroberts.bsky.social

December 17, 2025 at 10:59 PM

chùi

@seanccroberts.bsky.social

Oh are we ozyposting?

#poem #skypoem #ozymandias

Parody of all star with the contents basically of shelley's oxymandias:

Somebody once told me
Two legs trunkless and stoney
Like a wreck out in the desert they stand
And a shattered visage lies
Near enough to see its eyes
And its sneer, shrewdly carved by an old hand

Well,
The years start coming and they don't stop coming
Passions survive by the sculptor's cold cunning
The hand that mocked and the heart that fed
The stamp of life onto rock that's dead
Who was the one in that antique?
Cold and frowning that face cannot speak

The pedestal still remains near
The passages still remain clear

He is
King above kings
May he rule till
Doomsday

Look out
On his works and
Let your thoughts bring dismay

Words that now decay
While the level sands stretch away

October 30, 2025 at 6:40 PM

chùi

@seanccroberts.bsky.social

Yeah "omg your app uses AWS??" is the tech equivalent of this meme. A completely ethical supply chain is not really possible in 2025! We're all compromised, like Chomsky says, just work toward making the situation better instead of worse

A drawing of a peasant saying "we should improve society somewhat" and the Very Smart Mr Gotcha popping up out of nowhere to respond "yet you participate in society. Curious!"

October 20, 2025 at 11:23 AM

chùi

@seanccroberts.bsky.social

Who robbed the Louvre? Right answers only.

October 19, 2025 at 9:38 PM

chùi

@seanccroberts.bsky.social

Gavin:

The tweet from 9/11/16 saying "send are gonna look themselves in the mirror, take a deep breath and tell themselves 'we gotta get more racist'"

October 7, 2025 at 11:05 PM

chùi

@seanccroberts.bsky.social

The tweet from 9/11/16 saying dems are gonna look themselves in the mirror, rage a deep breath and tell themselves we gotta get more racist

September 26, 2025 at 5:08 PM

chùi

@seanccroberts.bsky.social

Reskeet with your current mental state

Captain Picard aboard the starship Enterprise, staring into a room he has just entered with a pained expression. Captioned (wailing)

September 16, 2025 at 2:42 AM

chùi

@seanccroberts.bsky.social

Literally what 'AI' boosters sound like when they talk about how much time their saving not learning how to paint or not learning how to write or even not knowing how to code.