Close Looking: No. 13: Yours Now

Christina Habibi

Yours Now, 2025
36 × 48 × .75 in
Acrylic, oil, graphite and spray paint on canvas

Painting details & availability →

A dark central form dominates the painting with an upright, almost armored presence. Loose linear marks move through it with a different kind of energy, more instinctive and charged. There's force here, but also exposure.

That combination matters to me. Power can look solid from the outside while still containing fear, desire, grief, or uncertainty. The things that give us strength are often bound up with the things that make us vulnerable.

We all have moments when something has to be faced. Sometimes it’s a hardship arriving from outside us. Sometimes it’s something we’ve carried for years and managed not to confront directly. Either way, preparation only gets us so far.

There are experiences we can’t master in advance. Grief, fear, mortality, desire, memory. They don’t necessarily become easier because we understand them. Sometimes the encounter itself is what changes us.

Maybe courage has less to do with defeating what scares us than with being willing to meet it without knowing what will happen next.

Some battles begin when we decide not to look away.