R.H. Quaytman has observed, “I find it helpful to think about painting as if it were poetry, and to focus on a given painting’s grammar and syntax, even on its vocabulary.” Indeed, the artist approaches painting like writing, engaging in a period of research and reading before creating the individual works that constitute each series or “chapter” in a growing body of work. Point de Gaze, Chapter 23 reflects the history of the region around Brussels, the city where this piece was initially exhibited. Quaytman photographed a model garbed in a stylized version of ornate head-pieces held as reliquaries by the Beguines, a community of women who practiced a mystical form of Catholicism in the area as early as the late 12th century. The photograph was made into a silkscreen, which the artist transferred onto the painting’s finely gessoed surface. The act and metaphor of seeing has been a unifying thread in Quaytman’s art, with abstract and figurative imagery working hand in hand to pose ideas about perception. In the left portion of this painting, a tracery of delicate lines challenges the eye, becoming visible only as a viewer moves near the image. The notion of revelation through close contemplation is echoed in the mysterious figure whose view of the outside world is obscured by a void in her garment, possibly indicating a quality of inner vision befitting the Beguines. Given this theme, the title is a play on words: point de gaze is a type of gauzy lace developed in Brussels in the 19th century, but the words equally suggest the activity of gazing.