This painting seeks to bring the inside out. It depicts my brother caught in a moment of contemplation. When we become lost in thought, we lose awareness of our bodies and appearance. In that moment of dissociation, I believe we become more truly ourselves. A crack appears in the barrier between our inner world and our skin.

Although it may appear to be a realistic portrait, the focus is more on the feeling conveyed through the brushstrokes. I wanted to capture that sense of intuition - where you don’t need to know what someone is thinking to feel it.