The Painting
Neil Sandell (CA 2019)
9 min
This we much we know. The woman in the portrait is wearing pearls, leaning forward, smoking a cigarette. But the rest is unknown – who she was, her relationship with an unknown artist. It is open to speculation. This absence of information invites those who see her to project their own stories onto her. She is like a mirror. Knocked off balance by the painting, the narrator ponders what lies behind his obsession with the woman in the portrait. He revisits an upheaval in his life and a stark truth that he has been avoiding.
Writer/Narrator: Neil Sandell
Producers: Neil Sandell with Mira Burt-Wintonick, Cristal Duhaime & Sarah Geis Sound Design: Mira Burt-Wintonick & Neil Sandell
Selected by guest curator, sound artist and podcast producer Cristina Marras
“I find this piece fascinating yet disquieting for the way in which it manages to embody absence, making us feel all the melancholy of not knowing, that transcends the search for information on the object at the centre of the narration, to become subtle nostalgia, a sensation well known to all expats around the world.”