In representational painting and drawing, everything arises from a primordial act: seeing. This action, so mundane and prosaic, is the paradoxical existence of two opposite mindsets. When gazing at something, we either experience it as a nonobjective knowledge, or we identify it as a mental image—something constructed in the mind. This fascination with phenomenology, metaphysics, and cognitive processing has become the philosophical and conceptual foundation for my paintings. The act of painting becomes a study of my time and existence with these subjects, and the paintings themselves capture the idea that the ‘seer’ and the ‘seen’ are made of the same mental matter. Capturing the essence of life, these figures and flowers embody the ephemerality and mortality of life, memory, and emotion, and each painting is not a picture to look at, but is a picture to see according to. Additionally, each painting does not provide answers, but rather prompts contemplation, consideration, emotion, and reflection in the viewers. This becomes an ongoing loop of perception—the subject interpreting me, me interpreting the subject, the painting merging these two perceptions, and the viewer perceiving this dual perception. Formally, I also explore the idea that color, light, and depth are made visible to us through abstract internal equivalents, which I translate externally through paint. Therefore, these paintings are not aiming to replicate the actuality of the subject, but to embody my internal cognition and perception of the form, and my presence in the same space as them. Each painting is, instead, the image which my mental perception constructs, making it as much a representation of my own mind and thought as one of the figures or flowers themselves.