Portrait of Oshun 2019

Harmonia Rosales’s ‘Portrait of Oshun’ shimmers with a tender, luminous oil paint. I can almost feel Rosales’s hand moving, figuring out how to make skin glow. Look how the browns and golds aren’t just laid on flat but blended, like she’s coaxing the figure out of the canvas. The way she places peacock feathers and sunflowers around the sitter’s face, feels both decorative and symbolic, like a gift. It reminds me of those moments in painting where you’re trying to balance realism with something more…I don’t know, dreamy? Like you’re not just copying what you see but trying to capture a feeling, an essence. It also reminds me of the way Alice Neel painted portraits of her friends and neighbors, not to flatter them, but to try and capture something real about who they were. Painting is like a conversation across time, where we're all just trying to figure out what it means to be human.