A Letter to Harold

Harold Smith is a marginal male character who appears in the second season of Twin Peaks. Claustrophobic and withdrawn, he keeps orchids in his house, collects other people’s secrets, and eventually hangs himself after experiencing profound betrayal.

​

This visual epistle, addressed to virtually all viewers, brings together identity, desire, dreams, and family relations within an image that has been repeatedly appropriated or imperfectly reproduced. The image embodies the artist’s initial engagement with the orchid as part of an intimate and obscure discourse: a desire inscribed in the orchid’s physical body, and a sense of frustration lodged in the figure’s inner life.