Once, in a group setting, I was asked to sit silently in front of a stranger, eyes locked, for five minutes. Do you know how long five minutes is? It’s an eternity when you don’t know someone. 

 

Staring silently into another human being’s eyes is an intimate exchange. At some point - beyond the initial discomfort- you begin to uncover this immense beauty. In the silence of the gaze, you come upon a knowing, a knowing so deep, it pierces the pretense. 

 

Suddenly, images in your periphery fade, and you’re left with this resonating vision deep within the mind’s eye of an indescribable energy. An energy that flows in and out, conditional on your willingness to surrender to the moment.

 

In that gaze, lost in the depths of humankind, there is no I, there is no we, there is no other, such distinctions cease to exist, there is only being.

 

I believe we have deserted this gaze. We are so consumed by the addicting cry of our phone screens, that we fail to look at one another.

 

I seek to have my art cause you to pause. To pause and attend with your eyes. To gaze with every morsel of your being and in that gaze to find a moment of truth. We are one!

This is what my art is about. 

 

I’ve been drawing this one eye most of my life, perhaps that I may gaze upon the sweetness that lives within us all. 

 

Absent language, absent words, if we gaze long enough, we may be granted participation in this joy.