Elyse Ricketts

between thresholds,

I am incessantly between thresholds, unsure what I am becoming—whether I am still in the act of covering up or already beginning to undo it. This painting rests in that uncertainty, where nothing settles into a final state. It sits close enough to feel present, but not close enough to resolve what it is asking of the eye. The clasp of my bra has already given way, though my body has not yet followed. Something here resists completion—a kind of hesitation where meaning does not declare itself. To look is to remain there a little longer, where clarity never fully arrives, and my body is felt not as fixed, but as something shifting, just before it is fully revealed.