Why I Rarely Explain My Paintings

People often ask me, “What does it mean?”Sometimes they ask it with curiosity. Sometimes they ask it as if meaning were a label I forgot to attach.

I understand the impulse. We live in an age of captions, summaries, and instant conclusions. We are trained to consume. Scroll and move on.

Painting does not work like that.

A painting is not a problem to solve. It is a space to enter.

Explanation can be a form of closure

When I explain a painting too precisely, something collapses.

Not for me. For the viewer.

A fixed explanation can shrink the experience into a sentence. It can flatten ambiguity. It can silence the viewer’s own inner response.

In other words, it can close the door right after opening it.

I prefer to keep that door open.

Meaning is not delivered. It is co-created

You never arrive in front of a painting empty-handed.

You bring your memory.Your fears.Your tenderness.Your personal history.

The painting meets you where you are, not where I was when I made it.

If two people stand in front of the same work and experience two different truths, this is not a failure of communication. It is evidence that the work is alive.

A painting that allows only one reading is not generous. It is brittle. If you’re curious how this openness plays out in specific works, you can explore a selection of paintings here.

“But it’s figurative. Isn’t it obvious?”

There is a common assumption that figurative painting does not require explanation.

You can see the figure. You recognize the body. So the meaning must be self-evident.

In reality, recognizability does not reduce ambiguity. It disguises it.

Because the subject is identifiable, the viewer lowers their guard. Interpretation feels obvious, even when it is doing most of the work. Projection becomes more confident, not less.

If recognizability were the same as meaning, photography would have ended art a long time ago.

Figurative painting does not explain itself. It simply makes misunderstanding more comfortable.

Intention matters. But it is not a verdict

I do work with intention. Constantly.

Composition, gesture, light, atmosphere, symbolism. Nothing is accidental. But intention is not a sentence handed down from above.

It is a starting point.

Sometimes a viewer will see something I did not consciously place there. That does not threaten me. It can even be meaningful.

What I resist is the idea that my explanation should override your experience. Or that your experience should invalidate mine.

A painting can hold more than one meaning without becoming confused. It can hold tension without becoming dishonest.

The viewer’s discomfort is real. It is not always the painting’s task

A viewer can feel disturbed by an image for valid reasons. That feeling deserves respect.

But discomfort does not automatically mean that the painting is promoting what unsettles them.

We live in a time where many subjects are charged. The gaze often arrives armed with conclusions before observation has begun.

I do not paint to provoke. I paint to reveal.

Sometimes revelation is quiet. Sometimes it is unsettling.

Art is not a contract to neutralize every possible interpretation. It is not a safety manual.

What I offer instead of explanations

If I rarely explain meaning, what do I offer instead?

Three things:

Craft you can trust. The work is constructed, not improvised. Even when it appears simple.

A direction, not a conclusion. A mythological reference. A mood. A question. Never a decoding key.

Room. For your own interpretation.For your own silence.

A painting that cannot survive without explanation is fragile.I want my work to be the opposite of fragile.

Some of these ideas are easier to experience than to explain. They live quietly inside certain series more than others. Explore the Beyond series

Explore the Dominium series

A small story, and everything it contains

More than thirty years ago, I painted a man from a photograph taken in Cameroon, in the late seventies.

He was not in a prison. He was not confined. He was seated inside a wooden house, looking out of a window.

The window happened to have a wire mesh.

He asked my friend for a beer.

That is all.

Everything else came later. Not from the painting. From the people looking at it.

When I do explain

There are moments when I will speak more clearly.

When a misunderstanding reduces the work into something it is not. When a symbol is stripped of context and turned into accusation. When a boundary is needed.

Even then, I do not give a final meaning. I offer a clearer ground to stand on.

The work must still breathe on its own.

A simple invitation

If you want to know what a painting means, start here.

Stay with it longer than usual. Notice what your eyes return to. Notice what you avoid. Notice what you invent.

Then ask a better question than “What does it mean?”

Ask: What is it doing to me? Why now? Why this image, in my life, today?

If you choose to share what you see, I read those messages carefully. Not because I need agreement but because I am genuinely interested in how the work continues once it leaves my studio.