The Piece

The Talk

A Key, A Question

This piece holds a key —literally and figuratively. A key to what, exactly? That’s for the viewer, as well as the creator, left to discover.

It’s there, embedded, waiting. But it is also enclosed, cradled within a form that suggests pregnancy —creation, potential, something not yet fully revealed.

Blue and red as a combination has fascinated me for a while now.
In anatomy diagrams, for example, each color denotes a different type of blood. Red indicates oxygenated blood carried in arteries, which flows away from the heart. Blue indicates the opposite: deoxygenated blood carried in veins which flows back into the heart to get ‘refreshed’.
In a symbolic sense the deep blue, surrounding and holding, carries a sense of calm and depth, but also the unknown. We automatically think of water, including all of its properties.
The red is raw, alive, pushing outward. Fire.
And this distinction comes back in multiple iterations in our day-to-day life too. Red and blue taps -warm and cold. Fast food logos are red, software logos are blue.
As arbitrary as these associations may seem, or even be, none of them were chosen coincidentally.

And then there’s the white—layered on itself, as if to say that even what seems empty is never just nothing. Absence, too, has depth.

At one point, I added crayon outlines to the key. It felt right, like an extra pulse of energy, a way to make the shape vibrate a little more. Then came doubt —was it needed? Did it make sense?
Stepping back, I realized that’s part of the process too. Art, like intuition, sometimes reveals itself in layers. Some meanings surface immediately, while others take time to be recognized.
But it had to have meaning, after all: why would I have created the association otherwise?
And maybe that’s the key itself: to trust the process, even when the answers appear hidden.