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Ephemeral Atmosphere · 2023
Silent Expression
Lips
Available · in the studio, Phoenix
The mouth without the sound — lips as the atmospheric threshold between thought and expression, silence at its most physical.
Lips (2023) is an exploration of intimacy — of expression without speech, of presence reduced to gesture. This 48 x 48 inch mixed media painting belongs to the Ephemeral AtmosphereCollection, where photographic elements are altered and abstracted through touch, layering, and concealment.
The image began with a photograph — a close-up, cropped, and blurred — over which layers of acrylic and pastel were applied, not to obscure but to reframe. The lips remain barely legible: a suggestion of shape, color, and movement. Around them, the canvas softens into powder pinks, peach, and charcoal smears.
I painted Lips thinking not about seduction or beauty, but about communication. The way lips speak, tremble, hesitate. The way they say more than words. This piece is about the trace of connection — what lingers after something has been said or almost said.
It shares a quiet affinity with Marlene Dumas, whose emotionally charged figurations collapse intimacy and ambiguity into single strokes. Like Dumas, I’m less interested in rendering bodies than in evoking the space around them — the psychic atmosphere they create.
Lips doesn’t stare back. It whispers. It invites the viewer to lean in, to wonder what is being said — or what was silenced.
As part of the Ephemeral Atmosphere Collection, this piece walks the line between exposure and erasure. A portrait made not of face, but of feeling.
Where to see it. In person at RituStudio, Phoenix, by appointment. Represented by Jarrow & Goodman, Los Angeles.
The space it needs
- Wall
- At least 5 ft wide
- Ceiling
- 8 ft or more
- Light
- Natural light transforms this work — morning and evening light read differently
- Daylight
- Charcoal and pale gray hold steady in daylight; the single crimson accent is what warms when afternoon sun comes through a west window. Indirect light keeps the mouth from growing louder than the field.
Lives best in
Living room 5/5
At 3 × 2.5 ft, Silent Expression: Lips fills a living room wall without commanding it, and the slow burn of crimson against charcoal gray rewards the kind of unhurried looking that a shared home allows.
Bedroom 4/5
The whisper-quiet palette of warm and pale gray settles easily into a bedroom, and the emotional register of longing, something said or almost said, fits the private hours of early morning or late night.
Details
- Size
- 3 × 2.5 ft (W × H)
- Medium
- Acrylic on canvas
- Finish
- Epoxy over acrylic. The resin lifts the color off the canvas and holds it forward, so the surface deepens as the light moves across the room.
- Year
- 2023
- Collection
- Ephemeral Atmosphere
- Palette
- Charcoal Gray · Crimson · Warm Gray · Pale Gray
- Weight
- About 22 lb
- Ready
- In the studio; delivery 6–10 weeks
Its ArtGram
ArtGram.Fork
- Texture2
- Form2
- Colour range2
- Palette4.3
- Contrast3.7
- Abstraction Quotient-1.5
