XAVIER’S LOST SOUL
Original Painting | Acrylic on Canvas | Framed | 80 × 100 cm
Awarded at Chianciano Biennale 2022
This is one of the hardest paintings I’ve ever made. Xavier’s Lost Soul is a kind of self-portrait, though I didn’t set out to make one. It came through during a time when I didn’t know who I was anymore. Grief, memory, and identity were all tangled, and I needed somewhere to put what I couldn’t carry.
The figures in this piece didn’t arrive fully formed. They surfaced through the layers, blurred, partial, and barely held together. Some days they felt like ghosts while other days like parts of me I was trying to reclaim. Their faces seem to cry, or maybe purge is a better way to phrase it. What pours from them isn’t gentle. It’s messy. Necessary. Like the body refusing to hold something in any longer.
I didn’t try to clean it up. I let the painting be what it needed to be. The textures are thick and broken. The colour is instinctive. Every mark is a fragment of something real, even if I can’t name it.
This piece doesn’t try to explain anything, but it does offer truth and the kind of survival that doesn’t always look like strength but still counts.
*This work is not currently available for sale but can be reserved upon enquiry.
Details:
Title: Xavier’s Lost Soul
Medium: Acrylic on canvas
Size: 80 × 100 cm (framed)
Framed: Custom Black wooden float frame
Finish: Two coats protective Satin UV varnish
Certificate of Authenticity: Included
Award: Chianciano Biennale 2022, Italy
“I think this was the painting that taught me I didn’t need to be whole to make something honest. It holds the version of me that was breaking, and trying, somehow, to come back.” –Anthony
