“Even when physical sight fades, true vision remains.”

With these words, Jesperish opens a threshold, an invitation into a world where seeing is no longer bound to the physical, but expanded into memory, presence, and soul.

NETRA, a Sanskrit word meaning "eye," but also "vision," "guide," and "inner clarity", is more than a collection of artworks. It is a ritual. A journey inward, through visual and emotional memory, through fragments of perception stored somewhere between the eye and the spirit.

Jesperish has been drawing eyes since childhood. The eye was always the first gesture, the beginning of every image. Even unconsciously, every drawing started there, a single point of connection to the world. But for Jesperish, the eye was never just a shape. It was a companion. A witness. A kind of quiet consciousness that watched over him during times of anxiety, disorientation, and growth. A guardian of the invisible.

In NETRA, this lifelong relationship with the eye becomes something new, multiplied, meditated upon, internalized. Each drawing becomes both a refuge and a mirror. A refuge for emotions unspoken, for pieces of the self that often remain hidden. A mirror, because every eye looks back at us, reflects us, gently asks something of us.

The works in the collection emerge from a slow, deliberate process. Each eye is first hand-drawn, then scanned and digitally painted, combining the tactile immediacy of traditional drawing with the precision and layering of digital tools. Every detail, every hue, every contour is a trace of a specific emotion, a memory, a shift in consciousness. As Jesperish says: “Each eye I draw is not just an image, it’s a reflection of something I’ve remembered. Or something I’ve reclaimed.”

At the heart of NETRA, words and vision intertwine. The following poem, written by Jesperish, becomes not just a companion to the work, but its living soul, whispering the longing, the searching, the profound fragility that NETRA holds within:

NETRA

I wish we knew,

but we could not see,

not ourselves, not the way others saw us.

We reached for hands,

then pulled away,

chasing the reflections we hoped they'd find.

We wanted to be seen,

not just looked at.

We wanted to be known,

but did we know ourselves?

We ran, we fell, we broke,

yet the eyes around us never left.

Still, we wondered,

were we their image, or our own?

Some lose their sight,

some close their eyes.

Yet eyes always watch,

even when they stray.

We let each other go,

not because love faded,

but because love knows

when to witness,

and when to let go.

And so we walk away,

not lost, not abandoned,

but searching for the sight

that is truly ours.

For in the end,

we are all just reflections,

longing to be real.

And here are eye.

This poem suspends the collection in a delicate tension: the impossibility of truly seeing ourselves through the eyes of others, the ache for authenticity, the silent wisdom of letting go. It mirrors the artworks not through description, but through resonance, offering a rhythm of longing that the drawings themselves silently embody.

Vision, for Jesperish, becomes a form of healing. The eye that “smiles” when he is gentle with himself, that “lingers” in moments of disconnection, is a mirror of his inner dialogue. Every unsettling gaze, he suggests, is a chance to meet a forgotten part of the self. The other becomes a reflection. The artwork becomes a threshold.

NETRA does not ask viewers to understand. It asks them to feel. To slow down. To listen to the parts of themselves that resonate with these images. And perhaps, to allow themselves to be seen, without defense.

In a world saturated with images, NETRA returns us to the essence of seeing with the heart. Vision becomes remembrance, recognition, reverence.

Because in the end, as Jesperish reminds us:

“We are all living mirrors. Reflecting. Remembering. Becoming.”