The gaze that isn’t looking at you.

I keep painting women from behind.

I didn’t notice I was doing it until I’d done it five or six times. Cerulean Gaze is one of the most recent — a woman in a deep blue wrap and an oversized sun hat, turned away from the viewer, looking out in a quiet moment. You don’t get her face. You don’t really get her. What you get is the shade her hat throws and the blue of what she’s wearing and the quiet of her posture.

I think I keep doing it on purpose.

I wanted to paint something blue and beautiful. I’d been experimenting with my style and subjects for a while, and I knew I wanted to try painting a serene blue.

The thing about not showing a face is that it gives the painting back to the viewer. A face directs everything — you can’t help but read the eyes, the mouth, the expression. Turn the figure away, and the painting becomes about being her, not looking at her. You feel the hat shading your own eyes. You decide what she’s looking at past the frame. You bring your own gaze.

I do this a lot, actually. Sun-Drenched Solitude is a woman walking a dock toward water. The Midnight Gala is a different woman walking into dark trees. Both turned away. None of them looking at us.

I think it’s because I wanted to make a portrait that doesn’t ask anything of you. A painting whose gaze is somewhere else leaves room for yours — interpretation, freedom, feeling.

That’s why I called this one Cerulean Gaze. Not because anyone in the painting is looking at you. Especially because no one is.