FH400 VIII Second Thought

FH400 Four Horizons VIII (second thought)

14x10" collage, markers on board

Part of the collage is a print of A344.

FH398 Four Horizons VI (change)

 FH398 Four Horizons VI (change)

10 x 14" acrylic, ink, collage on canvas

Private collection

FH398 description
Four Horizons Series

A378 Missing III (wolf)

A378 Missing III (wolf)
8x10" acrylic on board
$60

Return to Anomaly Series

P276 Inter-Facial Difficulties

P276 Inter-facial Difficulties
18x20" digital collage, oil on canvas
Private Collection

This collage was done for the InterFaces online exhibit, the theme being 'the masks we wear'.

January 10, 2001: I began assembling two mask paintings for the exhibit, both with collaged elements, P275 and P276. Working on them both at once, using the digital shots I had taken of my own face and hands, I came up with quite different compositions, one where the hands and fingers seem to form a mask, and one in which the hands are holding or removing the masks. After they dried, I did acrylic under-paintings in French ultramarine, cadmium orange, and yellow ochre, carving out shapes.

January 11, 2001: Last night I decided to work up the second collage, P276, in oils, and I spent some time on the left hand of the figure in the far right. The ochre under-painting had taken away from the overall composition; being too close to the orange of the masks, but it makes an excellent ground for the flesh colour. In this painting, which I have rather whimsically titled "Interfacial Difficulties", the orange colouring and the cutting away of the head and hair separate the facial area, but there is no head behind it, no creature behind the mask, so to speak. The bodies are all flesh, just necks, torsos and arms. I have thought of adding lumps behind the masks, to represent heads, but am intrigued with the idea of there being nothing behind the masks.

January 12, 2001: The afternoon was spent working on P276, the oil collage. The image took a sudden twist when I began isolating some of the hand shapes, making one orange. Suddenly the hand becomes an object demanding attention. Here I am, it says, insisting it is different from all the others. The addition of crimson, which adds mauve tones in the flesh and blue, also adds more dimension. The mask, with its bulging eye sockets, is bothersome, one is not sure why, until one realizes that it would be impossible to see out of it. Perhaps every mask in the picture should have a flaw or difficulty.

Paleozoic Series

P275 Digital Mask

P275 Digital Mask
18x20" digital collage, acrylic on canvas
$350.00

This collage was done for the InterFaces online exhibit, the theme being 'the masks we wear'.

January 10, 2001: I began assembling two mask paintings for the exhibit, both with collaged elements, P275 and P276. Working on them both at once, using the digital shots I had taken of my own face and hands, I came up with quite different compositions, one where the hands and fingers seem to form a mask, and one in which the hands are holding or removing the masks. After they dried, I did acrylic under-paintings in French ultramarine, cadmium orange, and yellow ochre, carving out shapes.

January 11, 2001: In P275, the acrylic collage, there is only a mask, with two arms supporting it, the hands forming a mask in themselves, masking the mask. This image is more ambiguous, though it looks a little like a fossil, and I may put a version of it in the large hanging.

Paleozoic Series

P274 Creature with Virtual Mask

P274 Creature with Virtual Mask
24x24" oil, digital collage on panel
Private Collection

September 13, 2000: The new mask painting, P274 'Creature with virtual mask', has begun to show some alarming tendencies toward self-portraiture. Why does this surprise me, since the mask is a digital image of my face? But when it was simply under painted orange, it was more of a mask, less of a face. The creature beneath, who is removing the mask, is different, almost masculine. Yin and yang, or the reduction to mere opposites. Although the creature is simply one of my visages, it appears more real than I intended, which usually happens when I use the flesh colour. Even the orange, shocking at first, becomes a reasonable shade of skin when the features appear. The expression is always more important than the complexion. As well, this mask has eyes, each different, slightly askew, very human. Before I go to bed, I play with lights in the background, but everything added around the heads looks like hair, or an aura.

Tomorrow, a fossilized, fleshy shoulder and the larger-than-life hand, not so dainty. Perhaps it was swollen that day.

When I was arranging the collage and doing the underpainting for this work, I had thought of the orange mask as being unreal, but the orange colour merely added to its life, virtually a visage. As usual when I work with collage, I painted over and changed everything, eliminating digital detail and adding my own. I am particularly fond of extra bits of paper, which contribute edges that are not part of the original collaged image. The creature, then, is removing a lifelike face to reveal an icon of a face, the way the creature sees itself, an amorphous reduction. As well, the body is half in, half out of its shell...to whom does the violet robe belong? The disguise is but partial, making the gesture, or moment, a pivotal one. Is the creature assuming the mask, or removing it? Or the creature may be holding it up, like an artifact..."Pardon me, did you lose this?" Discarded, the mask may become a fossil, eyes crystallizing and skin turning to a ferrous shell.

Paleozoic Series