When I first laid eyes on “Mend” by Nathaniel Mary Quinn, my eyes were immediately drawn to that abstract collage of facial features. However, education from school told me that I had to look at and pay attention to the other features of this portrait like the long, chiseled neck, the color of the collared sweater, or the plants against the dark background. But the longer I looked at this painting the more I realized that Quinn wanted my eyes to be drawn to that collage. Quinn wanted my instincts to clash with my education just like how the pieces of the collage clash and collide with one another. He wanted me to pay attention to the mending face so he could tell me not to focus on the body, but rather on the intricacies and details of the face and what it represents. It was only then that the message came to me that every human, no matter how morphed they look, has a complex and interesting personality that we should focus on, but due to societal teachings, it has been neglected in place of our other physical features.