This morning I walked past a small gallery I'd never noticed before, tucked between a coffee shop and a bookstore. The window displayed a single painting—a woman's face fractured into geometric planes, each one catching the light differently. Something about the way the morning sun hit those angles made me stop.
Inside, the gallery was quiet except for the soft hum of the ventilation system. The walls were painted a warm gray that didn't compete with the work. I found myself standing in front of a series of portraits, all by the same artist, all using that same technique of breaking faces into facets like cut gemstones.
An older woman standing nearby said to her companion, "I can't tell if she's coming together or falling apart." That stayed with me. Because that's exactly it—each portrait exists in that ambiguous space between construction and dissolution.