At my high school, students lived on campus during the week, in a closed-off system where days stretched from studying at 6 a.m. to returning to the dorms at 11 p.m. In this painting, I captured a typical ten minute class break: everyone fast asleep among mountains of workbooks, their faces buried in pages instead of lifted toward the window outside. Our youth was quietly absorbed by the endless assignments written across the blackboard.
But I didn’t want to portray the scene as purely bleak. Despite its intensity, this routine held the memories of my friends and me. Our jokes, our exhaustion, our shared determination. So I chose warm tones and gentle, affectionate brushstrokes to soften the atmosphere, allowing the image to hold both the pressure we lived under and the warmth of the years we spent together.
