Untitled 11 (Ritual of the Flame)

A solitary figure stands like a ritual emblem, its elongated arms and mask-like face rendered with a deliberate naïveté that feels more ceremonial than childlike. The warm, mottled field around him—stained as if by age, smoke, or memory—presses inward while the small flame above his head proposes an unstable crown of spirit, devotion, or burden. In his grasp, a blade becomes a conduit: a thin red stream descends into a blossoming ground, turning violence into offering and suggesting that sacrifice, however intimate, can seed renewal. The composition holds a tense stillness, where tenderness and brutality coexist, and the body reads as both victim and officiant of its own transformation.