Description:

As a composition, Hope is certainly an understated painting. Although, a closer inspection (which may also require an inward glance) reveals an undeniable human quality that exists in the subject's quiet determination, expressed in a stoic upward glance and patient demeanor.

Despite the figure's distorted human form, sagging posture and look of fatigue (the consequences of an indeterminable gloom) the image's striking contrast is provided by the individual itself, who appears patiently resolute and illuminated from within, perhaps infused by some secret knowledge that remains unseen.

Hope, after all, is the lantern that lights the way (out of darkness).