Charcoal
61 x 80 cm

This charcoal portrait by Surya Bajracharya depicts his mother and uncle in their youth, based on a photograph he discovered in a shoebox. The original image had a haunting, cinematic atmosphere, evocative of Diane Arbus or David Lynch, that compelled him to draw it. What began as a straightforward representational drawing exercise gradually evolved into a personal meditation on memory, family, and the passage of time.

Bajracharya uses charcoal, a tonally dynamic, delicate and vulnerable medium to building the portrait through countless tiny, abstract gestures. The result is a life-like, photo-realistic rendering, yet the process itself became far more than an act of reproduction. As he worked, Bajracharya found himself in quiet dialogue with the photograph—contemplating its hidden layers and reflecting on the lives and experiences of the two young figures captured in time.

The act of drawing became a meditative process, one that bridged personal history and artistic inquiry. In shaping the likeness of his family members, he also traced the contours of aging, nostalgia, and the impermanence of memory.

This portrait stands as both homage and investigation—an attempt to hold still a fleeting moment, and to explore how the past lives on through art, memory, and the quiet labour of close observation.

Image: Brenton McGeachie