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This work was created during a moment of rupture.
A brief period of clarity, sobriety, focus, and presence, followed by the sudden re-emergence of desire.
Connection arrived unexpectedly and intensely, without stability. What felt like recognition quickly became confusion. What felt like intimacy revealed itself as misalignment. I ignored my own instincts and betrayed the life I was trying to protect.
The title, I Saw Heaven in Your Eyes and I Hated You For It, names that contradiction.
The central eye is not symbolic.
It is remembered.
It holds the experience of wanting someone so badly that I became someone I was not. Of blaming myself for being left, and believing that if I had been different, quieter, stronger, more desirable, the outcome would have changed.
The work sits alongside a passage from philosopher John N. Gray, whose writing gave language to what I could not admit at the time. That the human impulse to strive, to adapt, to reach for what feels transcendent, even when it pulls us away from ourselves, can become a form of self-erasure. That peace is often lost not because we are unworthy, but because we refuse to remain who we are.
“Humans cannot become cats. Yet if they set aside any notion of being superior beings, they may come to understand how cats can thrive without anxiously inquiring how to live.
Cats have no need of philosophy. Obeying their nature, they are content with the life it gives them.
In humans, on the other hand, discontent with their nature seems to be natural. With predictably tragic and farcical results, the human animal never ceases striving to be something that it is not.”
John N. Gray, Feline Philosophy: Cats and the Meaning of Life
Print Details
Printed on Hahnemühle Photo Rag® Satin, selected for its ability to preserve depth, softness, and subtle tonal transitions without gloss.
310 gsm
100 percent cotton
Delicately textured surface
Acid and lignin free
Museum grade archival quality
Printed in Melbourne, Australia.
This work was created during a moment of rupture.
A brief period of clarity, sobriety, focus, and presence, followed by the sudden re-emergence of desire.
Connection arrived unexpectedly and intensely, without stability. What felt like recognition quickly became confusion. What felt like intimacy revealed itself as misalignment. I ignored my own instincts and betrayed the life I was trying to protect.
The title, I Saw Heaven in Your Eyes and I Hated You For It, names that contradiction.
The central eye is not symbolic.
It is remembered.
It holds the experience of wanting someone so badly that I became someone I was not. Of blaming myself for being left, and believing that if I had been different, quieter, stronger, more desirable, the outcome would have changed.
The work sits alongside a passage from philosopher John N. Gray, whose writing gave language to what I could not admit at the time. That the human impulse to strive, to adapt, to reach for what feels transcendent, even when it pulls us away from ourselves, can become a form of self-erasure. That peace is often lost not because we are unworthy, but because we refuse to remain who we are.
“Humans cannot become cats. Yet if they set aside any notion of being superior beings, they may come to understand how cats can thrive without anxiously inquiring how to live.
Cats have no need of philosophy. Obeying their nature, they are content with the life it gives them.
In humans, on the other hand, discontent with their nature seems to be natural. With predictably tragic and farcical results, the human animal never ceases striving to be something that it is not.”
John N. Gray, Feline Philosophy: Cats and the Meaning of Life
Print Details
Printed on Hahnemühle Photo Rag® Satin, selected for its ability to preserve depth, softness, and subtle tonal transitions without gloss.
310 gsm
100 percent cotton
Delicately textured surface
Acid and lignin free
Museum grade archival quality
Printed in Melbourne, Australia.