This trilogy of portraits that engage with the topic of masks and identity. The paintings have faces of the same person represented twice, once as a traditional portrait and second face with a mask.

The work acts as a realization of our collective desire to see beyond the mask. It plays with how ego and esteem functions behind our masks and also without them. In the sudden erasure of our facial identities we have simultaneously been comforted in our anonymity, annoyed that we cannot “show” ourselves, and wondered about completing the picture of the person in front of us. At a time when we are acutely aware of the power of the gaze (male and otherwise) the absence of the face, the power of the eyes, and our own voyeurism has become acute. We have existed behind a curtain and for the portrait painter the experimentation with these ideas is inevitable.

I was working as an instructor at the time of the doing this work and I had students volunteer to be photographed for the paintings.  The pictures where then uploaded into Photoshop and side-by-side portraits were created. This provided a template that allowed the images to be drawn and painted.