Woman with her hand resting on her Face by Raquel Reis
Explore Mondoir Studio
Medium: Watercolor on paper
Dimensions: 29 x 42 cm
Year: 2023
Price: $500.00 USD
Status: available
In “Woman with her hand resting on her Face,” I wanted to capture the private moment when the world grows quiet and attention turns inward. Her hand supports her face, but it also feels like a gentle boundary, holding space for thoughts that may not yet be ready to become words. I see this gesture as both vulnerable and self-possessed, a pause that belongs entirely to her. I used watercolor pencils to let turquoise, pink, green, and violet move softly across the figure, creating shifts that suggest the changing nature of thought and feeling. Against these transitions, the expressive line work remains immediate and restless, like an inner voice continuing beneath stillness. Her direct gaze complicates the intimacy: she is absorbed in herself, yet fully aware of being seen. This work can stand alone or enter into dialogue with two other female figures as a triptych exploring hand gestures, body language, and feminine subjectivity. I hope viewers encounter not a fixed portrait, but a living emotional presence, and perhaps recognize their own need for reflection, privacy, and inward pause.
Why collect this work?
A supporting hand becomes the work’s structural hinge: it steadies the tilted face while sharpening the tension between private reflection and the figure’s direct, watchful gaze.
- Reis describes her broader figurative practice as translating experience through gesture, color, and pictorial invention. Here, that approach is concentrated in an enlarged face whose pose remains legible despite pronounced distortion.
- In the photograph, arched eyes, compressed features, bright blue lips, and a long hand are bound by repeated contours. The floral garment and earring add decorative incident, while dense diagonal marks keep the apparently resting pose visually active.
- Catalogued as watercolor on paper, the medium permits translucent passages alongside firmer linear definition. Here, overlapping pink, green, turquoise, and violet areas appear less descriptive than relational, separating and reconnecting cheek, hair, clothing, and background.
- Encountered as a study of pose rather than likeness, the work makes a familiar hand-to-face gesture carry opposing signals: composure, guardedness, display, and scrutiny. That unresolved combination gives the portrait its curatorial interest.
About the Artist
Raquel Reis
Raquel Reis is an artist on Mondoir Studio. Artistic discipline: painting. Based in Madrid, ES.
Nationality: Brazilian
My work is rooted in sensation, perception, and gesture.
