Rumination

Artwork Details​​

• Graphite on cotton rag paper 

• Dimensions: 28" x 35"

• Year: 2024

• Series: Seeing and Being Seen — Precursor Works 

• Original Artwork

• Unframed

• Price: $1,800 CAD 

• Shipping quoted seperately

About the Work

Rumination explores the uncertain space between contemplation and awareness. The subject's gaze is direct, yet her expression remains difficult to interpret. She appears absorbed in thought, caught just before an emotional response, or perhaps newly conscious of being observed.

 

Rendered in graphite, the portrait brings together meticulous detail and psychological ambiguity. The scale allows the texture of the skin, the subtle transitions of light and shadow, and the intricate structure of the hair to establish a compelling physical presence.

 

The drawing emerged from an earlier stage of my practice, when technical refinement was a central ambition. Yet the choice of subject points toward a question that would become increasingly important in my work: how much can we truly understand about another person from what we see?

 

Rumination holds that question open, allowing the viewer to encounter a face without arriving at a definitive reading of the person behind it.

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About the Series

Seeing and Being Seen explores portraiture as a psychological and perceptual encounter. Through shifts in resolution, fragmentation, gesture and the relationship between figure and background, the works examine the distance between recognizing another person and truly knowing them.

 

The series considers how identity is shaped by observation and interpretation, and how a face can reveal something of a person while simultaneously withholding it. The viewer is invited to look closely, question first impressions and consider what remains beyond the visible image.

 

Rumination belongs to the group of earlier works that helped establish the interests underlying this investigation, before those ideas became a deliberate and structured painting practice.