Forced Emotions

A face rendered in feverish pink, orange, and violet stares out with eyes closed or half-shut, features held together by loose black scrawl that scratches across the surface like static interference. Nothing about the expression settles into a single readable emotion the loose gestural lines fight against the warm, almost tender color beneath them, as if two different feelings are being layered onto one face against its will. The mouth sits closed, unreadable, caught between calm and something more agitated. There’s a friction here between what the color wants to say and what the line insists on scratching over it warmth undercut by static, softness interrupted by tension. Forced Emotions captures that particular strain of performing a feeling that doesn’t quite fit, the face doing its best to hold an expression that the scribbled marks keep threatening to unravel.