These works stemmed from a series of observed encounters with family members and friends found asleep. The body poses and facial expressions these sleeping figures were exhibiting became an interesting visual dynamic to study. The way the blankets they hold on to shaped around their bodies, they way the light hits the fabric and their skin; it becomes reminiscent of the way the masters of historical art incorporated light and color into their own figure paintings. Artists like Caravaggio, and Rembrandt captured light this way by incorporating chiaroscuro in a piece. For this set of works a sense of voyeurism is conveyed. The viewer is looking at sleeping figures, intruding on potentially intimate moments and is invited to take a closer look at this moment in time, because it has been reproduced in a painting. The painter’s initial observation of happening across the figure asleep suggests the closeness of their relationship, these moments could not be observed otherwise. This intimacy is enhanced by the color scheme of the works. The viewer gets lost in the light and the shape and the color the painting presents to them, or in the folds of the fabric reproduced in paint. They follow the painting with their eyes the way they’d walk across a physical landscape.
