![['Stephenie' ink portrait.jpg]] ### **Artist’s Note** The painting turns on the tension between the one and the many — the lone consciousness adrift amid the restless motion of the collective. It reflects on the recurring drama of civilisation: how vision and autonomy struggle to survive within systems that both promise and suppress freedom. Beneath the turbulence runs a quieter current — the dream of [[Anarcho-syndicalism]] — where solidarity might arise not from obedience, but from the self-willed cooperation of free individuals. The woman’s gaze holds its own stillness within that vision: not in defiance, but in lucid recognition of how easily both liberty and unity can fracture.