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