The Optimist

The Optimist

Oil on canvas Artist's Collection

In The Optimist, Strahan uses the architecture of composition itself to mirror the inner mechanics of resilience. The painting unfolds in a looping visual circuit: beginning with the small hitchhiker at the top left, the eye moves downward along progressive enlargements of the same figure, tracing a memory of collapse before returning upward toward restoration.

The four color figures at the center—softly blurred, suspended between past and present—serve as emotional anchors. The three women hover above the grayscale body lying face-down, visually "holding" him in place. Their presence creates a moment of pause, a gravity into which the viewer is drawn. When the gaze rises again to the standing figure in the foreground, the sensation is one of being lifted alongside him.

This cyclical motion reflects the painting's psychological narrative: a man recalling his own history of devastation while simultaneously choosing to rise. The hitchhiker glancing back and then forward, the flirtatious vintage film heroine signaling for a ride, the bashful thumb-out gesture, and the suited man who meets the viewer's gaze—all become metaphors for the emotional risks of reentering love, possibility, or life itself after heartbreak.

The Optimist ultimately locates optimism not in naïveté, but in the willingness to get back on the road—fully aware of the past, and fully willing to risk the ride again.