See Feelings

With See Feelings, I wanted to explore the subtle interplay of emotion between two people through soft pastels against a calm turquoise background. The medium allowed me to capture something ethereal and intimate in these portraits.

The composition shows two faces – one with eyes open, alert and observing, the other with eyes closed, turned slightly away, in a moment of deep internal feeling. I chose this contrast deliberately to show how we experience emotions both externally and internally. The man’s gaze seems questioning, searching, while the woman’s closed eyes suggest she’s turned inward, perhaps feeling rather than seeing.

The color palette is deliberately muted and dreamy – soft flesh tones warmed with touches of pink and cooled with hints of blue. The turquoise background creates a peaceful space for these emotions to exist, like thoughts floating in a calm sea. I used the pastel medium to create soft edges that blur the line between figure and ground, suggesting how our emotions often blur the boundaries between self and other.

It captures that delicate moment of emotional connection – or perhaps disconnection. Are these two people sharing a moment of understanding, or is each lost in their own emotional world? The slight turn of their heads, their different states of awareness, leaves this question open to interpretation.

The loose, atmospheric treatment of the faces allows their expressions to shift slightly depending on how you look at them, much like real emotions that can be hard to pin down or define. It’s about those subtle moments when we try to understand what another person is feeling, while being caught up in our own emotional experience.