Oil on Canvas
160cm x 116cm
I wanted to express emotion that is not afraid of endings.
 The skulls are companions, reminders, witnesses and memories.  I painted the chair so that death is not behind  or looming , but integrated into life.
 
The cigar ,slow, deliberate, chosen. Unlike the candle, it is something to consume, you control. I wanted that contrast: one flame we are given, another we create. One fades inevitably, the other fades by our own indulgence.
The expression is important. I resisted making it grim or overtly ominous. Instead, watching—calm, measured, almost inviting. I didn’t want a clear boundary between the figure and the void. That ambiguity mirrors the way we never quite know where life ends and something else begins.
In the end, this is not a painting about death itself. It is about composure in the presence of it. I wanted the viewer to feel a quiet tension—unease, perhaps—but also a strange calm. As if, for a moment, they are sitting across from someone who already knows how their story ends… and is in no hurry to tell them.