watcher
i painted this when i was preparing for my first ever art fair. it was in my hometown, during christmas season.
for my booth i wanted to prepare three artworks made specifically for this event. i didn’t know if i’d be able to finish the artworks on time, and whether they will be any good on a deadline. but i ended up loving all three, and apparently so did other people.
when i feel that there is a very certain connection between my artworks, i call them sibling paintings. anarcho, hunger and watcher were sibling paintings. connected by their color pallet and by timing.
unsurprisingly, none sold during the art fair. but hunger was picked up by a friend when i posted about it online. and anarcho captured the eye of another buyer during a festival exhibition the next year. of the three sibling paintings, i’ve only got watcher still sitting in my studio, on display next to my books.
watcher is the smallest of my artworks on the website, somehow both cozy and ominous. i tend to shy away from animal depictions in my art, i often feel like they are out of place with my style. but watcher just works. it carries a sense of natural mythology that i like in my art, along with a sense of the slightly unhinged.
without the eye perhaps it would be just a cozy moth painting. i’m not even sure if that’s a butterfly or a moth actually, or something else. either way, the eye adds a lot. i do love eyes in my paintings.
that’s what makes it a watcher. a small, seemingly insignificant creature, with the allseeing eye. god in a bug. divinity in the unnoticed. does that unsettle or comfort you? it can go both ways. though i feel like if it unsettles you, perhaps that reveals an inner thing you should look at. what is your relationship with the earth? with nature and god? both are the same thing.
the canvas itself has tape on the other side, hiding a cut that was an accident, but adds to the raw quality of the artwork now. the cut is seen on the frontside as well, mostly if you know it’s there. it can be painted over, but i didn’t want to do that. nothing is truly accidental.