Eyes

Medium: Mixed Media on Canvas
Size: 4ft x 4ft
Creation Date: 2023
Collection: Hand-painted Photography

Eyes (2023) is a painting about attention — not what we look at, but how we look. This 48 x 48 inch mixed media work from the Ephemeral Atmosphere Collection is both intimate and expansive, evoking the tension between seeing and being seen.

The canvas is a haze of overlapping forms — rounded shapes, faint outlines, and layered circles that hint at eyes without illustrating them. Hues of soft gray, ochre, pale rose, and shadow blue drift across the surface, like fog lifting just enough to feel a presence behind it.

I painted Eyes while reflecting on perception as a relational act. Every time we observe something — a person, a painting, ourselves — we shape it. And in turn, we’re shaped by it. The act of seeing is not neutral. It’s charged. Vulnerable. Tender.

This piece finds resonance with the psychological abstraction of Mark Bradford, whose work navigates visibility, layering, and social perception through surface and erasure. Like Bradford, I’m interested in how we hide and reveal — how we present ourselves and how others interpret those presentations.

Eyes isn’t about voyeurism or surveillance. It’s about presence. The feeling of being met, or missing that moment entirely.

As part of the Ephemeral Atmosphere Collection, this painting captures the fleeting intensity of awareness. A gaze held too long. A glance that lingers. A moment when something is almost understood.