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We tend to take for granted those who are closest to us. And when time runs out, we find ourselves scrambling to make up for lost moments—or left pitying ourselves for the things left unsaid, the gestures left undone.

This painting draws from that emotional undercurrent. It was deeply inspired by Jack Gilbert’s poem The End of Paradise, in which a writer, confronted with death, begins to write letters to old friends—only to discover they are already gone. The poem holds both sorrow and tenderness; it lingers in the ache of missed connections, and the beauty of caring too late.

In this piece, I’ve contrasted the cold, mysterious outdoors with the warmth of an intimate interior. Two women step into a room bathed in soft, layered light. One watches with interest, the other approaches a writer, who sits deep in thought. Whether he is unaware of their presence or deliberately ignoring them remains unclear. The ambiguity is heightened by the moonlight that casts a hazy corona around the women, giving them an almost spectral quality.

I used bold, expressive brushstrokes to emphasize the emotional weight of the moment, while carefully rendering the different light sources to heighten the tension between these two worlds—the visible and the hidden, the past and the present, the living and what may already be lost.