Two Shores 01

Time runs downward. The first line, at the very top, is the beginning of the moment; each next line stacks beneath the last; the bottom edge is the end. You read the piece the way you read a page, except there are no words.

One ring holds the left column, the other holds the right. They never cross. The pale band between them is the only border in the work, and both shores run along it without ever stepping over.

From across a room you see a texture and its shifts in density, like cloth woven tighter in places. At fifty centimetres the texture comes apart: every line is a heartbeat again, and your eye follows one particular minute.

Forty-five minutes, end to end. That is enough lines for density to draw something from a distance, and few enough that one heartbeat still reads apart from its neighbour up close.

Tight passages are where the heart ran fast; open ones are where it slowed. This is not a reading of the work: the gap between two lines is literally the time between them.

A shorter capture would give fewer, wider lines, and the piece would ask to be seen closer. A longer one would give more and finer lines, and it would ask to be seen from further away. Duration mostly decides distance.

Time runs down at the same speed on both sides, so one height in the frame is one second. That is what makes the crossed reading possible, in spite of the separation.

When both columns tighten at the same height, something reached both people at once. When only one tightens, it was hers alone.

This detail does not survive a screen. It shows on paper, at the right distance, and that is why the piece exists as a print rather than a file.

For two people whose bond rests on staying two. This piece does not manufacture a 'we': it puts two distinct territories in one frame and lets them answer each other.

It is also the shape that ages best through disagreement. Nothing is melted into anything, so nothing is lost if the relationship changes shape over the years.

Fine-art paper, signed pigment print, portrait format. The upright frame follows the reading: the eye travels down, the way time does.

The artwork arrives matted, ready to frame, with its numbered certificate. The frame stays yours — a standard size, chosen at home, in front of the wall that will hold it.