andtheywillwaittoseethefireandseasinthiereyes.greenwind,greenbranches.theshipupontheseaandthehorseonthemountain is a portrait of the artist and his lifelong friend, Archel, also a native of North Philadelphia and one of Cruz's earliest sitters. The subjects are nestled intimately on a couch, reinterpreting and playing with classical poses, folding in on each other with draped arms and layered hands.

The two are dressed in hand-batiked blue and red fabrics, bathed in jewels, playing with cultural identifiers and royal and religious iconography. Waves of ocean- and lava-like colored fabric ripple from left to right, evoking elements of fire and water colliding.

The title is a play on words from the poem, Romance Sonámbulo, by the queer/gay Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca, who is a long source of inspiration for the artist. The text of the poem is best known for the phrase, "green, how I want you green, green hair, green wind" -- a play on the green skin of the sitters. These moments of coloration are used to amplify gestures of touch and warmth that signify the power of chosen family.

While portraying two closely linked friends, the shapes and gestures in the painting also take on architectural forms. The left arm of Archel rests on the couch, serving as a foundation, while a second pair of arms joins the two subjects together, and a third arm (Archel's right arm in the right panel) becomes a column or buttress, supporting and holding up the body of the artist.

The pillow in the lower right corner offers a tableau suggesting a specific place and moment in time: Ben Franklin drafting and signing the U.S. Constitution in Philadelphia in 1787. By placing the pillow at the margins, and centering the sitters, the composition decentralizes dominant American and Philadelphia-based historical narratives of white patriarchy in exchange for a diasporic vision of ancestry tracing back to African, Caribbean, and Indigenous origins.

The painting is part of the chosenfamily series, which explores the nonbiological bonds formed by gay people and the idea of family structures chosen out of mutual love and support to build hope and resilience. Drawing from John Singer Sargent's high society portraits and Francis Bacon's paintings in warped environments, the sitters are invited to pose in opposition to social norms as a form of resistance, play, and queering the act of posing. The portraits of this series speak of queer perspective and agency.