Doven Vaughan the face before words

"I paint faces — not for their likeness, but for what hasn't been said yet."

I came to painting through a breaking, a severing I did not choose, a loss that flew two halves of my life to separate places and left me to find my way back to whole. Paint is how I made the way back. Each face is a listening, a small honest creature cupped in the hand, a truth that royalty and reason could not silence.

My hours in the museums, studying the masters — the real ones, the ones who were tortured and yet somehow held the torch for the whole world to see — taught me to look at the spaces between things as much as the things themselves. The yellow heart. The kite still taking flight. I edge toward the surreal, a testimony to the dreams we hold. This is my reaching for the sun.