The Vision embodies the blend of figuration, abstraction and symbolism that define the visual language of Haitian Canadian artist Manuel Mathieu. Part portrait, part inner landscape, part mirror, the painting stares back at the viewer as if to question what or who is the real subject of the work. Mathieu is interested in the landscape of the mind. His paintings frequently serve as playing fields on which intuition and instinct mingle with history and myth. Having a vision is only one manifestation of the larger phenomenon of having vision. In this painting we see Mathieu exploring both meanings on various levels—it is the realization of the vision of the artist; a depiction of something seen and something to see; while the overt presence of two eyes looking back at the viewer suggests that the painting itself has vision. Mathieu’s own aesthetic vision becomes clear in the interplay of painterly gestures, mixing gloopy, sumptuous acrylic pools with sark, distressed color fields, and lyrical markings with charcoal and chalk.