modesty 18 Drawing

My work moves between the figurative and the abstract, the quiet and the confrontational. At its core is a curiosity about human resignation, complicity, and desire — the way we accept structures, narratives, and compromises for the sake of progress, comfort, or belonging. In my portraits, I often depict moments of soft tension: faces that seem calm yet hold unspoken certainties, as if they've quietly agreed to conditions they once might have resisted. My abstract works, on the other hand, become places where form, line, and color collide — sometimes echoing order and sometimes mocking it. Humor, irony, and melancholy all live side by side in my paintings. Some works — like Money Laundering Opportunity 45 — are direct provocations, while others whisper in subtler tones. I never fully know what I’m doing when I paint; I trust the process to reveal what’s beneath the surface. The result, I hope, is work that feels both familiar and unsettling, inviting the viewer to consider what they’ve accepted without question. I am interested in fragility, certainty, the lines we tie ourselves into — and whether we can ever loosen them.