The Divided Soul

A vertical painting of a frontal bust-length figure, head, neck, and shoulders centered and filling most of the picture plane, cropped at the bottom edge.

The head is bald with prominent ears on both sides, bisected by a vertical line running from the crown down through the center of the face, neck, and torso. The division continues through the nose, lips, and chin, splitting each feature into two halves.

The viewer's left half is rendered in reds, pinks, and warm browns. Its mouth corner turns upward, with a curved crease running from the nostril to the mouth and a row of white teeth marks at the lower lip. The right half is rendered in blues, from pale cyan highlights to dark navy shadows, and its mouth corner turns downward. A long narrow rust-brown vertical stripe runs from the lower lid of the right eye down the cheek and past the jaw, with a shorter parallel mark beside it. Eyebrows on both sides are thick tapering dark strokes; the eyes are dark almond shapes with lighter rims. The shoulders slope outward to the edges, the left in red-brown, the right in blue and dark teal.

The background is yellow-green and lime, broken by closely spaced vertical streaks of olive, ochre, mauve, pink, and darker green that read as drips or combed striations, with thin paler lines laid over the green. Paint is opaque and brushy with visible directional strokes. Modeling on the figure is blended, with white highlights along the nose bridge, brow, jaw contour, collarbone, and shoulder. Contour lines at the jaw, neck, ear interiors, and the central division are drawn in thin dark or reddish lines over the paint. Some low relief is suggested in the brow and cheek. No signature, date, or inscription is visible.