This painting began with the feeling of being inside a fractured, unstable space where attention itself becomes uncertain. The two ball-like forms may suggest eyes, but I do not think of them only as eyes. They may be watching something outside the painting, or they may be the ones being watched. They may also be powerless objects caught in a field of forces larger than themselves.
I am interested in that ambiguity: the moment when perception feels active but also helpless. The title, The Watcher, points toward an act of looking, but the painting does not resolve who holds that position. The watcher may be the viewer, the objects, the surface, or the painting itself.
The image has a dreamlike or nightmarish quality for me. I cannot tell whether it represents a fixed condition, something sealed and immutable, or whether it is more like a film still, the instant before an event takes place. That uncertainty is important to the work. It reflects the Above/Below structure that runs through my practice: a surface that appears present and still, and beneath it a submerged pressure that may be fear, anticipation, memory, or projection.
