Decadent
Medium: Oil on wood panel
Size: 20″ x 20″ x 1.5″
Year of creation: 2024
Artwork Availability: Available
Decadent is part of my Altered Realism series.
This painting emerged from a deep curiosity I have about contrast — not just in color and texture, but in emotion and meaning.
The grayscale portrait of the woman serves as a grounding force — calm, composed, ethereal. Her face is serene, yet there’s a tension in her downturned gaze, as though she’s lost in thought or remembering something unspoken. I deliberately kept her features soft and classical to evoke timeless beauty, but surrounded her with the unexpected.
The rose on her cheek is not a rose in full bloom, but one gilded and exaggerated with thick gold texture, glitter, and opulence — bordering on surreal. It becomes a mask, a crown, a statement — a symbol of indulgence, excess, and allure. The gold drips like honey or melted treasure, almost too rich, too much — hence the name “Decadent.”
The turquoise strokes represent emotional fragments — moments of clarity, disruption, or perhaps escape from the ornate weight of beauty and perfection. I wanted this to feel both intoxicating and unsettling, like a dream that’s gorgeous on the surface but leaves you thinking long after you wake up.
This piece was created when I was exploring the pressures of appearance, femininity, and the fine line between admiration and objectification. Decadent is a visual metaphor — beauty layered in gold, but still searching for breath beneath it.
