Disbelief

The story of Disbelief

During a renewed focus on oil and canvas painting, Essebes returned to portraiture — to feel paint moving from the brush, work with color, and return to a longstanding love of faces. The intention was to make something beautiful.

The painting began in atomic-punk imagery and the visual language of 1950s pilots: a young woman, blue eyes, goggles and green headphones. But it kept changing. A helmet appeared and was rejected — at one point, the artist thought it looked more like a basketball. Hair changed. Extra goggles came and went. A third eye was tried. Then the eyes multiplied.

As the figure became more serious and intense, she seemed to be witnessing something she could scarcely believe was happening. At the same time, the news occupying the artist’s thoughts began entering the canvas — the Epstein files, the abuse of children and the artist’s disbelief at what she perceived as an absence of accountability.

The thought running through the artist’s head became something like “Que le Fuck”: how can this possibly be happening? At first, Essebes thought she was painting a victim. She eventually realized she was not. This was a child watching.

The beautiful portrait had become something else. It became Disbelief — and the beginning of The Whole World Is Watching.