The Patient Looks Back is a series of oil paintings of my therapist, developed over several years and made entirely with my fingers.

Working from photographs taken during our monthly sessions, I press, layer, and partially remove paint while it is still wet. Color is mixed directly on the surface. The scale of the marks corresponds to my fingers, so contact remains visible and cannot be fully controlled.

Each painting returns to the same figure. My therapist’s role is to observe while remaining composed and partially opaque. In these paintings, that condition is reversed. I am the one looking closely, repeatedly.

Likeness does not resolve the image; it increases the pressure within it. The surface holds that pressure—built through contact, erosion, and reworking—so that forms emerge and destabilize at the same time.

Across the series, recognition never fully settles. The figure remains present, but not fully knowable.

From a series of 17 paintings, 2022–2026