Venus de Milo began with an encounter at the Louvre, an encounter that would remain with me long after I left Paris.

Traditionally understood as a representation of Aphrodite, the ancient Greek goddess of love, Venus has endured as an image of beauty, desire, and the mystery of human connection. For me, however, she became something more personal. She came to embody my emotional relationship with Paris itself, a city that, like Venus, has always seemed inseparable from the idea of love.

There is also an unexpected irony in that relationship. Paris was the first city to fall in love with my work. Before my name had become widely known in New York, my own home, my drawings were already finding their way into collections throughout Paris. The city became an important early witness to my work, and in time, Paris itself became part of my artistic story.

In my interpretation of Venus, the figure emerges through an intricate network of lines, each one contributing to a larger field of movement and energy. At the center, the lines unexpectedly converge into what appears to be a heart—the emotional epicenter of the composition, from which an almost invisible energy seems to radiate outward through the figure.

I did not intend to create a heart.

It revealed itself through the process.

That unplanned emergence feels essential to the work. It suggests that sometimes the deepest meaning in a work of art is not imposed upon it, but discovered within it. Venus de Milo became, quite literally, a work that came from the heart, a meditation on love, connection, Paris, and the mysterious dialogue between intention and intuition.

I first encountered her at the Louvre, before the pandemic. I remember the experience of standing before the sculpture, but I could not have known then how deeply that encounter would become connected to my own story.

By 2020, I had several projects planned in Europe, including a collaboration with the Louvre itself. Then the world stopped. Borders closed, museums closed, cities went silent, and everything that had been planned suddenly became impossible.

During that lockdown, I found myself returning to the memory of Venus.

With the world outside frozen, I began to give life to the piece. There was something almost instinctive about the process. I wasn't simply making an image of the sculpture I had encountered in Paris; I was reconnecting with a place, a feeling, and a moment that had suddenly become unreachable. The work came out of my heart.

As I drew, something unexpected happened. Deep within the figure, the lines began converging into the shape of a heart. I had never planned it. I wasn't trying to create one. It simply appeared through the accumulation and movement of the lines, almost as if the work had found its own center.

Perhaps that was fitting. Venus is the goddess of love, and Paris had become deeply connected to my own experience of love and recognition as an artist. The heart was there without me putting it there.

In 2021, Venus finally made her way back to Paris, where she was exhibited. In 2022, she traveled onward to Arles and was exhibited there. After her journey through France, I recently brought her back home.