Another Set of Eyes begins with a phrase so familiar it disappears: "I'm happy to be another set of eyes." We say it easily, reflexively, as an act of generosity. But sit with the words long enough and something shifts. What are you actually offering? The intention is genuine, and yet the words, examined too closely, become something else entirely. This painting lives in that moment of recognition.

A woman's face, my own, is rendered in mauve rather than flesh, a choice that creates distance from identity and invites the viewer into something more archetypal. The lower half disappears, and what remains is a gaze. Her own eyes look upward, rendered only partially. Above them, set into her forehead, is a second pair of eyes, more fully rendered, meeting the viewer directly. These are the offered eyes. They seem almost alien in contrast to the rest of the face, yet they are a part of her.

The piece asks what it means to offer yourself so casually. To give away something deeply bodily, wrapped in the language of a small favor. There is something almost beautiful in how strange it sounds. Something worth pausing on.

This painting is the first in an ongoing body of work examining the same tension. The next piece, An Extra Hand, continues the inquiry. The same casual generosity, the same unexamined gift of self, made strange again by looking too closely at what the words actually say.