Here we can see a young lady Aethelflaed, daughter of Alfred the Great, future Queen of Mercia, modestly contemplating the path of life before her. Light and shade feature in the picture, both symbolising events to come.
This picture shows a woman dressed in a typical Spanish Catholic headress (mantilla), as worn by women in Easter processions in Andalucia. The picture is punctuated with white spots of blank canvas. It is saying that we all start as blank canvases but, to degrees, are conditioned by our early environment, both passively and not so passively. Religion is used here to represent all the "conditioning devices/environments". This particular person has been brought up as a devout Catholic in Andalucia. She cannot escape that; it is an inevitable part of her. She looks out simply from the picture and asks you, the viewer, "What has conditioned you?
In this picture we see a five year-old boy with his back to us in a contemplative pose. He is growing, thinking, constructing himself both physically and mentally. The three background colours other the primary colours, from which all other colours can be mixed. At the same time they symbolise earth, water and air/light. The texture is that of building blocks, symbolising the construction process that is ongoing.
The picture reference here is my four-year-old son. What's the boy thinking? Watching? as he sits on a rug in the shade of a pine tree, the beach in the background within sight. This picture is about a moment of youthful contemplation, the body form of the young child, light and shade.