The Window
/Reynier Llanes
2016
Cuban-American, b. 1985
Watercolor on paper
Gift of the artist, made possible by Harmon-Meek Gallery
Florida Southern College Permanent Collection FP.2017.13.3
What we cannot see in this painting is just as important as what we do. A man with glassy, almost teary eyes stares off-canvas to the left, presumably out the titular window, the view through which we cannot observe ourselves. Is the man aware of us? Do we sit across from him in this room? Is he alone, immersed in his own thoughts, looking distractedly out the window? Or is he watching something just beyond the window panes — forever unseeable and unknowable to us? What is he feeling? What, if anything, might he be looking at?