Close Looking No. 7: Pure

Christina Habibi

Pure, 2026
24 × 30 × .75 inches
Acrylic, graphite and spray paint on canvas

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I started Pure with a single central form and built outward from there. As other forms emerged, I became less interested in connecting them than in the spaces opening up between them.

I layered paint, covered passages, and scraped back into others until three distinct forms seemed to float across the surface. In the middle, I found a kind of vastness. Rather than fill it, I wiped away a layer to expose some of the green underneath, giving that open space its own history.

The graphite marks became a way to keep the forms in relationship without collapsing the distance between them. They feel almost like thin wire, giving the painting a delicate structure, or like fingers reaching outward and making the lightest contact. They touch without gripping.

That is unusual for me. I often connect forms more directly, but here separation felt necessary. The painting still needed connection, just not much of it.

We live in a culture that tends to treat constant connection as inherently good. Everything is linked, shared, answered, and pulled into larger systems. Pure made me think about another possibility: things can remain distinct and still register one another.

The forms do not have to merge to belong to the same painting.

Sometimes the lightest touch is enough.