Friday, August 8, 2008

A Face in the Crowd


The painting above is an exercise to help me overcome my  faceaphobia. In case you haven't noticed most of my figures are faceless and it's working for some of them but I really need to grow as an artist and overcome my issue.   It's not that I can't draw faces... it's that I have trouble commiting to them and when you paint with melted beeswax that can lead to problems. Scraping away or melting off a face can ruin an entire painting and to be honest it's really kind of creepy. Lately I have been admiring the work of quite a few artists who do lovely portraits in a variety of styles and  they have inspired to me to just get over the control issues and paint some faces.  What I've realized by looking at these other artists is that our faces are asymmetrical and odd and that makes them beautiful.  They are reflections of our experience, emotion  and  character.  So I had this old painting which at one time was a complement to "One in a Million"(in my etsy shop) but decided to jump in and etch in some faces onto this crowd.   Have a great weekend!

2 comments:

Leililaloo said...

It's a greta new work! You know who does fabulous faces? really fabulous!!! It's an artist from south africa called, Marlene dumas. She's fantastic in wet paint faces. She captures the whole soul of a person in wettieness. It's unbelievable! Just today i saw her work in an art exebition here in amsterdam.

tangled sky studio said...

what good fortune to see her work in person! i read an article about her in the new york times a few weeks ago and agree that her faces are fabulous and haunting almost...