Skull study n1

SKULL STUDY N1
Before a series finds its language, the artist finds the subject.
Not the meaning — the meaning comes later, through accumulation, through repetition, through the gradual revelation of what you keep returning to and why. First comes the simple act of looking. Of sitting with something long enough to understand its structure, its weight, its particular presence on a surface. Of drawing it until your hand knows it without thinking.
Skull Study N1 is that act made visible.
Rendered in graphite, acrylic, spray paint and Posca markers on canvas panel, the skull here is intimate in a way the larger works cannot quite be — the square format placing you directly in front of it, at close range, with nowhere to look but at the thing itself. The graphite traces the bone with the patient attention of someone learning a language by copying its characters over and over until the gesture becomes instinctive. Around it, the background erupts in pink and blue polka dots with a festiveness that the serious subject neither explains away nor apologises for.
This is where the Memento Mori series lived before it became a series — in the studio, on a canvas panel, the artist and the skull in quiet conversation, discovering what there was to say before the words arrived.
For the collector who understands that the study is not the lesser work but the most honest one — the moment before the artist knew what they were making — this is the piece.
30.5 × 30.5 cm · Acrylic, spray paint, glazing, Posca markers and graphite on canvas panel · 2023 · One of a kind Unframed. Signed, titled and dated on the reverse. Certificate of Authenticity included.