Bluest Boy is a piece I painted while I had COVID, during a period of quarantine that made me think deeply about isolation and the emotional weight of being cut off from the world. The experience pushed me to reflect on how loneliness can distort time, making you feel separate from everything still moving around you.

In this work, I wanted to explore the tension between warmth and isolation—the way blue can simultaneously soothe and suffocate. I wrapped the figure in swirling indigo, like a shroud or cocoon, allowing the brushstrokes to spiral inward as if the paint itself is holding him together. Against the burning background, his face becomes almost wound-like, with red-rimmed eyes and parted lips acting as the only signs of heat breaking through the cold surface.

The figure is not isolated in the ordinary sense, but submerged—existing in that suspended state of grief where the world continues around you while you have gone entirely still. I wanted viewers to feel the contradiction in his stillness.