Robert E. Wells

Chiara presents a seated female figure positioned frontally within a shallow interior space. She wears a white dress patterned with small areas of exposed underpaint. Her head is slightly inclined, the features built up with dense, worked paint, while the surrounding background is structured through broad, layered passages of brown, grey and ochre. Paint is applied thickly and unevenly, with palette knife and brush marks remaining visible across the surface. The restricted palette is dominated by whites, muted earth tones and dark neutrals, allowing the figure to emerge through tonal contrast rather than detail. Wells painted Chiara as part of his ongoing engagement with the single figure, a subject through which he explores presence, stillness and the physicality of paint.