CONTORTION

Contortion is not staged. It is not sculpted to impress or disturb. It is what remains once the roles dissolve and something underneath begins to move. There is a moment, just before collapse, when the body ceases to pretend. That moment is where these paintings reside.

I stopped saying yes. I watched the routine crack under its own repetition. I did nothing. And in that stillness, contortion appeared, entering like a pulse once forgotten.

It is the affirmation of non-affirmation. Not resistance. Not rebellion.

Only what surfaces when there is neither performance nor denial. I have seen it. I have felt it. In the way ideas bend when they no longer want to please. In the way touch recoils. In the way silence becomes a shape.

2023-24

NOT RESISTANCE
NOT REBELLION

Just the body, done pretending

These works trace the quiet truth that rises
when performance ends
and the self slips out of frame

You see contortion in the trash, in waste, in food left to rot while someone out there is hungry. In the way people live, sold off in pieces. Bodies in debt. Joy on lease. Weapons made with more care than children.

Contortion does not belong to the clever. The first-degree fools attempt to wear it, to embed it in their walk. Yet the moment they try to grasp it, it vanishes. That is how you know they have missed it. Perhaps I have missed it too, even now, as I write this.

But something keeps moving. Keeps bending in ways I cannot name. And maybe that is reason enough. Why else would I paint?