Scroll down to see the painting and click the painting to zoom in

This painting began, like many, with a song playing low in the background — Brandi Carlile’s Human. Light floods the kitchen, slipping through crooked blinds, pooling on the counter, catching on glass, clutter and paper — soft, insistent, and slightly unforgiving.

She leans into the worktop, back curved, head bowed. Not broken, but caught — suspended in a moment between what just happened and what comes next. We don’t know what either of those are; the painting leaves the question open and, in doing so, invites viewers to supply their own explanation — and, perhaps uncomfortably, their own reflection. What I wanted most was to express the weight of that pause: a breath held in the middle of the day.

The room is not in ruins, but it’s far from calm. The palette skews cool — dusty blues, greys — with just enough warmth in the light to hint at the outside world. There’s a line in Carlile’s song that says, “I just want to feel my face in the sun.” But the woman in this scene doesn’t even bother to turn towards the light. The brushstrokes stay loose, restless, layered like the day she’s had. This isn’t about spectacle; it’s about the stillness that comes just after something and just before something else — the kind of stillness that demands more strength than motion ever could.

The true centre of the painting, though, is her hand — the one closest to us, clenched at the edge of the countertop, rendered with more care and tension than anything else in the scene. I wanted it to do all the talking.

To say: I’m still here. Just give me a second.
Not collapsing. Not moving on. Just holding still — long enough to feel it.

What I hope lingers is not the disorder of the room, but the stubborn verticality of the woman at its centre. She is not sainted, not heroic, just profoundly human — held up by a slab of countertop and a last reserve of will. In this painting, the everyday is not background; it is the battleground. And for a moment, in this slant of light, we are allowed to see it.