Tension becomes a language — first through objects, then through the body that holds them...

In this collection, the artist turns toward the subtle dialogues that shape our interior lives — the contrasts we inherit, the conflicts we carry, and the compromises that allow us to continue.

Each work approaches these negotiations differently: through objects, through atmosphere, and finally through the self who contains them.
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In Contrast, Conflict & Compromise II and III, finalists for the Tacit 20[2020] Still Life Prize, the still lifes become emotional studies rather than arrangements.

The objects do not perform; they listen. Their pairings — unlikely, uneasy, and tender in their dissonance — reveal how difference can share space without resolution.
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Hardness leans toward softness, bitterness rests beside sweetness, and light gathers where tension slows into stillness. These images do not explain; they observe the quiet labour of coexistence.
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With Goddess, the artist steps into the field she once reserved for symbols. The self emerges from shadow not as identity but as presence — the one who lives these negotiations from within.

What is shown is deliberate; what is held in darkness carries its own truth. The portrait becomes an archetype of interior strength, a figure who embodies rather than resolves the contradictions explored in the still lifes.
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Together, these works chart an intimate emotional terrain:
the contrasts we do not choose,
the conflicts we learn to breathe with,
and the inner sovereignty that forms in the space between.
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They are not images of objects or a portrait of a person —
they are meditations on the human condition itself:
the quiet negotiations of being.

Pigment on Hahnemühle Matt Fine Art, German Etching 310gsm, 85 x 53 CM, 2025 / Pigment on Hahnemühle Matt Fine Art, William Turner 310gsm, 41 X 41 cM, 2021, Jenani Therone.