A face emerges from fractured planes of crimson, gold, and green, textured like old photograph grain or hand-dyed cloth, each patch of color holding its own weather rather than blending into skin tone. The eyes are steady, unflinching, fixed dead ahead — the only part of the composition rendered with total clarity amid everything else dissolving into color and pattern. A woven border of black geometric strokes frames the whole piece like kente cloth or mudcloth, turning the portrait into something closer to a family textile than a photograph. His Eyes Forward is the most directly figurative piece in the current catalog, and the most overtly tied to the studio’s grounding theme — a face held in the same patient, observational regard that first drew this work back to a grandfather behind a camera, looking steadily at whoever stood in front of him.
A face emerges from fractured planes of crimson, gold, and green, textured like old photograph grain or hand-dyed cloth, each patch of color holding its own weather rather than blending into skin tone. The eyes are steady, unflinching, fixed dead ahead — the only part of the composition rendered with total clarity amid everything else dissolving into color and pattern. A woven border of black geometric strokes frames the whole piece like kente cloth or mudcloth, turning the portrait into something closer to a family textile than a photograph. His Eyes Forward is the most directly figurative piece in the current catalog, and the most overtly tied to the studio’s grounding theme — a face held in the same patient, observational regard that first drew this work back to a grandfather behind a camera, looking steadily at whoever stood in front of him.
