Agony 2

This stylized portrait, carved into bold planes of olive and ivory, holds the face like a mask suspended between dream and vigilance, where the heavy-lidded eyes suggest both inward listening and quiet endurance. Thick, decisive contours clamp the figure against a deep black field, while wavering linear filaments and encircling arcs behave like threads of thought—binding memory, breath, and the passing of time. Flowers press in from the margins as tender counterweights to the stern geometry of the visage, turning the composition into a meditation on vulnerability: softness insisting on presence within an enclosing dark. The overall effect is ritualistic and intimate, as if the sitter is being simultaneously protected and transformed by the very growth that surrounds them.