I keep holding on by John McCaskill

I Keep Holding On (2001) reflects a period of uncertainty and transition, created as the artist navigated professional instability and an impending move from California to Hawai‘i. Layered figures and restless marks convey the effort of staying grounded while familiar structures were falling away.

John McCaskill

I keep holding on

Mixed Media - charcoal and oil on canvas

72 x 48 x 2.5 in

$4,284

Available

Created in Alameda, California

I Keep Holding On was created during a period of personal and professional transition. In 2001, as the dot-com collapse destabilized my design practice, Jomac Graphic Communications, my wife and I were also preparing for a major life change—leaving California and beginning a new chapter in Hawai‘i.

The composition is layered and restless, built through oil washes, charcoal drawing, and repeated figurative interruptions. Faces surface and dissolve, gestures overlap, and marks drip and reassert themselves, reflecting the effort of maintaining balance while multiple pressures converged. The surface carries a sense of accumulation, as if the image is being held together moment by moment.

A recurring figure within the work is the monkey, which functions as my amakua, or ancestral guardian spirit. During this period, the figure took on a more complicated role. The “bad monkey” emerged as an alter ego—persistent and disruptive—mirroring internal doubt and self-sabotage during a time of uncertainty. Rather than appearing as a single symbol, the monkey is fragmented and woven into the emotional field of the painting.

The phrase I keep holding on came from a time when nothing felt settled. The painting reflects the effort of staying grounded while work, place, and identity were shifting. It marks a moment just before change—when the old was breaking down and the next step was still unknown.

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Additional Details

Additional Artworks

Wild Child

Fire Within

Beneath the Indigo Veil

Marilyn

Cybill

Nicole

Mystic Carnival

Unseen Duet