Untitled

A close, intimate portrait, rendered in loose, urgent charcoal — layered scribbled linework around the hair and shoulders giving way to more considered tonal shading across the face itself. The gaze is direct but withdrawn, the expression difficult to place — somewhere between weariness and quiet unease. The subject has an almost meditative, ambiguous presence — it's never been entirely clear to me who they are, only that the piece called to me the moment I saw it. Signed and dated by the artist, lower right.

This piece hung for years in the back workshop area of the ARTIS PURA studio, and I felt genuinely connected to it the whole time I had it there. The subject's expression always struck me as somewhere between anxious and searching — an expression I've since come to recognise, looking back, as one I relate to through my own experience of autism. I don't know if that was ever the artist's intention, but it's what drew me to the piece and kept me close to it for so long.