The Middle Line

Original painting by Michele Petrelli ©
Here, multiple planes of existence intertwine. At the top, a woman embraces a man: it is the moment of union, the emotional peak, the fusion of two souls. Below, the same woman appears lifeless, held by another man who tries in vain to awaken her — it is the fall, the loss, the threshold of the irreversible. Between the two scenes, a male figure lies horizontally, cutting through the space while connecting it: the Observer. He is the silent consciousness that contemplates the movement of life without being swept away by it. The woman is not life itself with its embraces and abandonments — she is the form through which consciousness experiences, falls, and finds itself again. What I reveal is an invisible structure of inner states. There is no beginning, no end — only a stream that flows, seen by the one who no longer identifies with the river, but with the gaze that watches it pass.