Coco

I painted this young Coco Chanel at the beginning of her journey, but the real shift was happening in me too: this was the moment the grid appeared in my work. At the time I was living between France and the Philippines, and those red lines and blue diamonds became a map of that double reality laid over the softer charcoal presence of Gabrielle’s face. I like the tension in it, the way French elegance meets a stricter geometry, because that is exactly how my own life felt then.