Carracolendas: Faces, Empathy, and the Space Between Us

Carracolendas started with a word before it started with an image, which is unusual for me. I heard it, liked the way it sounded, the rhythm of it, and went looking for what it could mean visually before I fully understood what I wanted to say.

What I landed on was a surreal world of overlapping faces, textures, and colors that bleed into each other without clear borders. Each face in the piece holds its own story and its own experience, but none of them exist in isolation. They're woven together, sharing space, sharing color, sometimes sharing an eye or a jawline with the face next to them. That overlap is the whole point.

I think a lot about empathy when I paint faces, especially when I paint more than one at a time. It's easy to see a crowd and register it as a single blur of people. It's harder, and more honest, to remember that every single face in that crowd is carrying something you can't see: a full interior life, a set of memories, a reason they walked into the room the way they did. Carracolendas is my attempt to paint that idea directly, to make the overlap and the individuality visible at the same time instead of asking you to choose one or the other.

The intricate lines running through the piece aren't decorative filler. I use them the way you'd use thread to stitch fabric together, connecting one face to the next so the whole composition reads as a single interwoven surface rather than a collage of separate portraits. If you trace any single line long enough, it'll take you on a loop through most of the canvas. That was intentional. I wanted looking at this piece to feel like a small journey, not a single glance.

People tell me they notice something new in Carracolendas every time they walk past it, and that tracks with how I made it. I kept adding detail until the piece felt like it could hold up to that kind of repeat attention, the way a good song still surprises you on the fiftieth listen.

Carracolendas is available as an unframed 30x40 print or as a framed canvas wrap, ready to hang. Either way, I hope it gives your space a little of that same sense of wonder it gave me while I was making it.