"Fencer's Contract"

A figure sits deep in a wing armchair, legs crossed, arms resting loosely on its sides; in place of a face there is a smooth, wrapped, mask-like head with a single blade or spike standing straight up from the crown. Above the chair, a gnarled piece of driftwood rendered like a bird or bat in flight hovers in an otherwise empty sky, with a tiny dark speck suspended between it and the seated figure.

Rendered entirely in fine, dense pen-hatching, the etching builds volume through crosshatched shadow on the upholstery and the figure's wrapped limbs while leaving the sky largely bare. The deliberately faceless, blade-topped head and the bird-like driftwood form give the composition an uneasy, dreamlike logic and a quietly unsettling mood.