I HARDLY EVER GO OUT

I Hardly Ever Go Out is a series of paintings that had many inspirations, among them Eugène Ionesco’s novel The Hermit. The starting point was two interiors—a residential room and a studio—which I transformed into a visual labyrinth. I saw the labyrinth as a metaphor for the process of gaining self-awareness: successive images, repeated and reworked, open up new “rooms,” like in a dream in which a familiar place expands into infinity. While painting, I worked with subtle shifts, repetitions, and the play of light in order to capture the boundary between what is visible and what is hidden. These two spaces became a site for meditation on presence, solitude, and the need to bring order to one’s life; the apartment is a metaphorical interior I enter in order to come to terms with darkness.