- Year
- 2025
- Medium
- oil on canvas
- Size
- 24 × 36 in · 61 × 91 cm
Sitting in a crowded room, watching us all pretend we weren't desperately hoping someone would see us.
There's something about friendship that we rarely admit—how it can feel both like the most natural thing in the world and like we're all just very good actors who've learned the same script. We've mastered the art of being together while remaining carefully separate, like planets in orbit, close enough to feel each other's pull but never quite touching.
I keep thinking about how we move through our days carrying these invisible threads that connect us to people we'll never really know. The checkout clerk who smiles at you the same way they smile at everyone. The stranger who holds the elevator. The friend who texts back immediately but somehow feels miles away.
It's not asking whether friendship is real—it's wondering if we've forgotten how to let it be real. If we've gotten so good at being friendly that we've lost the ability to be friends.
Maybe we are all each other's friends, in the broadest, most generous sense. Or maybe that's just the story we tell ourselves to make the loneliness more bearable. Either way, the question keeps us reaching toward each other.