Two YouTubers VI 2026 – 18 x 24cm, oil, acrylic, oil pastel, charcoal on canvas
Within the YouTuber series, this is the first painting that starts to explore the inner voice, political convictions, the bias inherent in all of us, the question of neutrality within the MSM and also alternative news, the proliferation of podcasts, the voice within a voice, inset frames, how conversations are framed, aspects of the attention economy that operate beneath the surface.
The palette is restrained, almost monochromatic with an earthy tan ground, creating a contemplative rather than alarmed atmosphere. The restraint feels intentional, turning down the visual noise to focus on something more internal.
A white ghostly figure outlined in the upper portion hovers above or behind a more solid, painted face, the voice within a voice, the internal dialogue, the political conviction that animates the public performance. The ghost figure is larger, more expansive, perhaps the ideological framework or inner conviction that the visible broadcaster is channeling or struggling with.
The more solid face, painted in warmer flesh tones, is smaller, more constrained, positioned within the body outline of the larger ghost. Nested, literally contained within that larger presence. The person we see broadcasting operates within, through, and because of that inner voice, that political framework, those convictions.
The small green rectangle in the upper left and the sketched inset panel in the lower right maintain the series’ vocabulary of nested frames and picture-in-picture, but here they feel less like system overload and more like layers of mediation, how conversations are framed, how voices get filtered through editorial choices, platform demands, ideological commitments.
The ghost figure makes visible what mainstream media pretends doesn’t exist: everyone has an inner voice, political convictions, bias. The question isn’t whether it exists but whether it’s acknowledged. Alternative news at its best makes those commitments explicit rather than hiding behind false objectivity.
That black horizontal band across the lower portion with its frantic scratched marks creates a foundation or barrier, perhaps the unconscious, the repressed, the things that can’t be said even within alternative media. The marks are agitated, dense, suggesting pressure from below.
A more reflective entry in the series, less about the violence of extraction and more about the complexity of mediation, the layers between conviction and performance, inner voice and public speech.