Ballenbak, oil on canvas, 20x20cm, 2025

Ballenbak depicts the artist as a toddler, seemingly drowning in a sea of oversized ladybugs. In the artist’s work, ladybugs function as a recurring symbol of fear, rooted in a childhood experience of a ladybug infestation in their bedroom. The painting reflects how the world can feel overwhelming and frightening in childhood, how everything appears immense and threatening, even when the danger itself is imagined.