You can’t draw what you don’t understand

Not simply a human eye but the metaphor of an all-seeing eye, open to two readings: the eye of the seer, poet or artist who sees more deeply than ordinary perception allows; or an allegory of media and technology recording our every movement.

The collage builds the context: sheet music for harmony and the music of life; newspaper fragments and Azerbaijani words, among them Pul, “money”, for the material world and the background noise of the news; and photographs of people, which show the gaze passing through successive epochs.

A horizontal format emphasises the grandeur of the central image. The blue eye sits a little above centre, shifting the balance upward, and is seen frontally, so the viewer looks straight into the pupil. There is no linear perspective; depth comes from the layering of collage and the softened ground. The gaze is drawn to the eye, then scattered across the fragments, while paint spatters carry it outward toward the edges.

Warm pinks, browns and oranges form the ground, with associations of earth, culture and history. Against them the cool blue eye commands attention, sharpened by white highlights on the iris. Black contours at the lashes and brow give it force; yellow fragments in the collage act as further accents.

Assemblage: the painted surface is integrated with real objects. The eye’s contour is drawn with a fine brush but left deliberately coarse to show the hand. The ground is laid in broad strokes with visible spatters. In place of paint, the pupil is a raised, dimpled element, which makes the eye resemble a camera lens and brings it firmly into the present.

A visual manifesto on perception. The traditional symbol of knowledge is placed in a context of information overload: consciousness formed by news, music, money and history, behind which a clear gaze can still see the essence of things. The Azerbaijani text and historical photographs make it a portrait of national identity under global pressure. Looking into this eye, the viewer becomes in turn the one observed.

Not a portrait but an allegory of human personality. The face is split down the centre, one half light in blue, the other dark in black: reason against feeling, the rational against the irrational. The eyes are replaced by mechanisms. On the left, a golden disc of gearwheels like a clock movement or surveillance camera, standing for cold calculation and control. On the right, a spoked blue circle like a wheel or fan, for the movement of life and the noise of emotion. The open mouth, drawn shut with red thread, is the key: the emotions are powerful, but their expression is constrained from outside.

A vertical format concentrates attention on the face. The line of the nose runs through the centre and divides the face into two conflicting halves. The viewpoint is frontal, so the face addresses the viewer directly. The image is planar, with depth created by layered paint and raised pupils. The eye travels from the blue forehead down the orange nose to the red mouth, and the threads carry it beyond the edge of the canvas.

Pure spectral colour, unmixed with grey, to raise the emotional charge. The red ground carries passion, anger and danger; blue and white on the left suggest calm and reason; black and orange on the right intensify the tension, with the orange nose as the brightest accent. The violet tongue adds depth to the open mouth.

A painting-object. Black contour lines give the features a graphic sharpness, and the broken lines of the brows add force. The paint is laid on thickly in places, with the canvas texture still visible.

A forceful statement about the modern individual and the loss of authentic feeling in an age of surveillance and information noise. The mechanical eyes stand for perception filtered through technology and media; the tightened thread for censorship, self-censorship or social pressure. The red ground and open mouth recall Munch’s The Scream, reworked for an age of technological control: sincere emotion, distorted by outside forces, becomes a set of mechanical reactions.

Human life as a theatrical performance. An enormous, anonymous hand plays the puppeteer, and its facelessness underlines the anonymity of power. The small marionette wears a bright red jersey and blue trousers, its face stylised as a broadly smiling emoji. The work reads as a commentary on the present: social media that require us to appear happy, political forces that shape opinion, and our own anxieties that govern how we behave.

A vertical format intensifies the pressure from above, with the hand hanging over the small figure. The fingers holding the threads sit at the exact centre, forming the axis of the whole construction. The viewpoint is from below, so we look up at the hand as the marionette does, and share its vulnerability. The eye moves from the bright figure up the threads to the massive hand, then out across the spattered ground.

Warm tones set against cool to sharpen the conflict between controller and controlled. A dense black ground makes every colour stand out, and spatters across the spectrum suggest disorder and the flow of information. The red jersey carries passion and energy, the blue trousers a note of stability, and the red threads bind hand and figure together.

A painting-object, its surface supplemented with real elements. The hand is built in heavy relief: the fingertips and folds of the palm stand almost four centimetres proud. Contour lines define the fingers sharply, while the marionette’s brows and mouth are deliberately primitive, echoing an emoji. The handling is coarse and dynamic, like living matter.

A study of the limits of personal freedom: is our happiness sincere, or a mask imposed on us? The harmony of the palette is deceptive, hiding a reality of dependence. Stylistically it joins Expressionist drama with Pop Art’s use of mass-culture images such as the smiley face.