Crying Face
Acrylic on canvas · 36 × 48 in · 1985
Painted in 1985, Crying Face presents an ambiguous expression held between grief, fear, and release. The exaggerated eyes carry the emotional center of the work, resisting a single interpretation and instead sustaining multiple psychological states at once. Fragmented form and distorted facial structure shift the image away from portraiture and toward internal experience.
Created in the basement of the artist’s Long Island home, the painting predates a period of lived grief, lending the work a quiet sense of forewarning. Through an early exploration of deconstructed cubism, Crying Face examines emotional exposure before its cause is fully understood, treating feeling itself as subject.
