A reflection on openness, meaning, and letting the viewer decide
What if naming something makes it smaller?
Language can clarify. But it can also contain. Shrink. Define too soon.
And I don’t want that for my work.
I don’t want to tell you what to feel. I want you to feel what you feel. Without a title nudging you or limiting the room you walk into.
Not naming isn’t a mystery trick. It’s a practice of trust.
It says:
“This doesn’t need explanation.”
“This doesn’t need to be solved.”
My paintings aren’t messages. They’re spaces.
Rooms you enter. Textures you meet. Movements you remember in your body before your brain catches up.
Naming collapses that space too fast. It turns encounter into interpretation.
But I’m not looking to be understood. I’m looking to be felt.
There’s a kind of power in not pointing. In not declaring.
Just allowing.
Letting the painting speak in a language beyond mine. Or yours. Or anyone’s.
It’s not about being abstract. It’s about being available.
Available to shift. To echo something different in each person who sees it.
The moment I name it, I fix it.
And I’ve spent too much of my life unfixing things to do that now.
What if meaning is more honest when it’s never finalized?