Face It: 2020
Recently I had been working from the gesture life model with short, active poses as the basis of figuration. But isolation during Covid months has changed the availability of everything. Having no models and being "safe" in work space corners at home, I focused on smaller scale paintings of faces. The watercolor "2020" captured the uncertainty of a life model's expression in a short pose. I am interested in the faces of people who are finally speaking out, thinking, sleeping, laughing, the expressions that may connect to our own feelings. Quarantine has made a lot of faces available on television. And text has become a frequent inclusion in these paintings.
Missing being with other people, I unwittingly surrounded myself with face works in progress. Cutting stencils from value shapes and contours of my own paintings, I could make multiples quickly. Resolving them as variations takes more time. But during the intense time of developing each painting, it becomes a personal companion for the duration of its resolution and possibly beyond.