This series of drawings explores women framed by candlelight, lifted from cinematic and cultural memory. Rendered in stark black and white, the figures emerge from darkness with only fragments illuminated: a face, a hand, the flicker of a flame. These partial illuminations echo the way women’s identities have historically been scripted—defined by what is made visible, and equally by what is obscured. Working with photorealistic black colored pencil or graphite on white mounted illustration board, I slow down fleeting filmic images into stillness. The candle becomes both prop and metaphor: a domestic object of care, ritual, and labor, but also a fragile light that burns at the edge of erasure. In some works, the women confront us with direct gazes, in others they are turned away, caught mid-gesture. This oscillation between presence and absence mirrors the contradictory archetypes of women as caretakers, specters, or villains. By translating these moving images into labor-intensive drawings, I resist the speed and disposability of media. The work asks viewers to linger with figures often overlooked or typecast, to consider the narratives inscribed upon them, and to see how these archetypes persist and haunt contemporary culture.
