Plaything in one's palm
He had escaped the cage, but he had brought the keeper with him in his head.
Driven by a restless energy that bordered on mania, he began to paint. He worked with a ferocious intensity, forgoing sleep, often forgetting to eat. The pristine white canvases provided by the residency became his confessionals. He didn’t paint the beautiful landscape. He painted his nightmares. He painted dark, twisted corridors that mirrored the service stairwell of his escape. He painted fragmented faces—his own, Caius’s, his father’s—all merging into one anguished scream. He used his hands, smearing paint, carving into the surface with the ends of his brushes. The works were raw, powerful, and deeply unsettling