"'Untitled Portrait' comes from an unfinished portrait of a friend in Pretoria. Using an unfinished sketch I translated the work into a large-scale painting. The nature of the background, flowers, and various foliage is a reference to the gentle persona of the subject. This large-scale work was one of my first attempts at colorful photorealistic backgrounds and the positioning of the character is also important in the way that it is meant to portray the idea of looking ahead with an elevated face in what I hope would come across as an optimistic pose. To me, there is something iconic about the figure as well as my usual abstract approach to the expression and gender identity of the person depicted in the image." - Navel Seakamela, 2021.
