Woman Looking Over Her Shoulder 

Curator: George Bouzianis gives us "Woman Looking Over Her Shoulder," and though it's undated, the energy really leaps off the canvas, doesn't it? A kind of urgent whisper in oil paint. Editor: It's very immediate, I agree. The palette is so limited, yet the earth tones suggest a really dense, physical materiality. You can almost feel the weight of the pigment itself, layered on top of layer. Curator: Absolutely! I'm really drawn to that slight tilt of the head. There is something so intimate, so raw in that gesture. She’s not just looking; she's feeling...herself, her surroundings. Do you sense that, or am I simply projecting my own angst? Editor: Not at all. I see it too. But I’m also considering the artist's process here. Look how Bouzianis hasn’t blended the oils smoothly. He almost sculpts with it, so you see each application as part of the image's making. The hand is as crucial as the eye here. It's pure labor turned into feeling. Curator: Precisely! It's almost like the medium becomes the message, a beautiful friction that expresses the fleeting nature of a gaze, a moment, the ephemeral soul…or the model resisting an uncomfortable pose. Editor: Ha! Well, maybe that discomfort contributes to the tension we feel looking at her. She isn’t passively being looked at. She's active, responding. That slight twist challenges the male gaze of traditional portraiture, or at least complicates it. I want to ask the model "Who is bothering you?" and more important "Do you know I am looking at the product of hours and hours of hand craft labor? It feels like Bouzianis wanted to ensure we did not take that for granted.". Curator: An amazing piece, no matter which way we tilt our own heads to view it. Thank you. Editor: Indeed. It highlights the relationship between maker, material, and viewer—it reminds us of the physicality of seeing, really!