This painting pretends to explain itself, but there is trickery involved. This work is a marriage of my two main interests, art and philosophy, and stands as a foundation for all of my work. The model was a friend who I felt would be a fitting subject for a reinterpretation of the Mona Lisa. From this work I discovered that the separation that has, for most of human history, been maintained between words and images was no longer serving us, and that mastery of both would be the measure of a great artist.