What are you looking at?

The painting “What Are You Looking At?” is a tense scene of clashing gazes in which the viewer becomes a participant rather than an observer. A large self-portrait occupies the upper part of the canvas: a face with bright red hair and cold blue eyes looks straight ahead, insistently and almost provocatively.

The lower part of the painting is filled with large decorative flowers reminiscent of a childlike ornament or a fabric pattern. Their brightness and simplicity contrast with the psychological tension of the scene, creating a sense of artificial “beauty” behind which anxiety is hidden. The flowers here are not so much a symbol of tenderness as an attempt to mask painful feelings.