As each portrait develops, more of the image becomes hidden from view. Individual moments are visible. The whole is not, at least not until the final layers of masking come off.
That creates a particular kind of pressure. Decisions have to be made about a painting that, technically, doesn't exist yet in any visible form. And the process leaves little room to correct course: once something is painted, it can't be undone. Everything that follows depends on what came before it.
When something goes wrong, the only real option is to start again. Every finished piece has, in that sense, survived its own process.
The image is planned in advance, then carried forward without the usual reassurance of watching it take shape. The reveal, when the last masks are removed, is the only moment the maker sees the same painting everyone else eventually will.