Portraiture has been part of my practice since I first began painting. From the very beginning, I found myself returning to the human face. What interested me, however, was never the person being portrayed, but the emotional intensity that a portrait can carry.

Whenever I came across a face—a photograph, someone in front of me, or even a single frame from a film—I often felt an urge to capture it through painting. My intention was never to reproduce a likeness. Instead, I borrowed only the elements that seemed essential: a particular expression, the tension around the eyes, the tilt of a mouth, or the structure of a face that held a certain emotional weight.

From there, painting would take over.

Texture, colour, the physical gesture of the brush, accidental drips, and the materiality of paint became tools for amplifying that initial emotional charge. The portrait gradually moved away from its source, becoming something that existed between observation and imagination.

In these works, two worlds meet. The visible world provides the structure—the traces of an existing face—while painting introduces its own language, transforming those features into something more intuitive and psychological. The portrait becomes a space where reality and painterly invention coexist, constantly searching for a fragile balance.

Portraits continue to appear throughout my practice, regardless of the themes I explore in each period. They function almost like a visual diary, often emerging from the leftover paint on my palette after working on another series. In this way, they quietly accompany everything else I make. They record passing emotions, states of mind, and moments that resist becoming part of a larger narrative, remaining a constant thread that runs through my work.