At 15, I was completely absorbed in graphite. Pencil felt like drawing in its most bare-bones form, and it was one of the first mediums through which I began seriously learning how to draw: how to observe, build value, render texture, and translate what I was seeing onto paper.
Eyes became a natural subject for that experimentation (and honestly I feel like artist has a phase of drawing eyes). I was fascinated by how little information you actually need to recognize someone. Removed from the rest of the face, an eye still carries an enormous amount of character. I drew each eye separately before assembling them into a larger composition.
When the work was eventually exhibited in high school, I watched people recognize some of the subjects without being shown anything beyond their eyes. That reaction became part of what made the work meaningful to me: these drawings that began primarily as technical studies also became an experiment in recognition.
Looking back at the series now, I also see it as a record of myself learning how to look. Before I had developed much of a relationship with any particular medium or way of making art, there was simply a pencil, a subject, and the process of trying to understand what I was seeing well enough to draw it.
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