You Look Beautiful This Way, 1995

Acrylic on painting board – 455 x 342 mm

This expressive portrait depicts an archetypal male figure – a survivor, a feral human-animal – captured in a moment of rare, lyrical serenity. The composition reveals the head, neck, and right shoulder of the subject through distorted perspectives and dense, gestural brushwork that follows the corporeal form with a sense of visceral continuity. The chromatic scheme is at once cold and earthen: the body is rendered in shades of ochre, blackened blue, ice blue, and white, while the background contrasts a deep ultramarine with electric yellow, forming a psychologically charged space.

The title, You Look Beautiful This Way, reads as an intimate address – both a trace of romantic memory and an aesthetic proposition. The work explores beauty within distortion, absence, and instinct, embedding this vision in a visual language shaped by childhood trauma. As part of the Tardigrade Cycle, it resonates with the series’ investigation into bodily archetypes and pre-cultural expressivity, where the figure becomes a site of raw communication and affective residue.