What an interesting picture! You did a great job on it! ^_^
It's pretty sad though isn't it?

Wonderfull work on this painting! oil on copper still have not tried that one but will give it a go sometimes. I like how it shows masks and faces, voices in the head that torture us ready to jump out and the mask of sadness. Well done!

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Traditional Purist and Proud of It
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Absolutely amazing...keep it up!, just lovely.

So much emotion.

This is brilliant work, as are the other pieces in your gallery

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_{Foxy Faced Charles should not be underestimated.}

I wanna hear the artist's input as far as meaning goes.

Is this just a means of relief in sadness?
And what did you think about in terms of symbolism?

I say the wing and thought about the flight of thoughts. and also the people in your head... they look like theyre in turmoil. Maybe issues?

IM REALLY CURIOUS!!

There are no short answers to your questions....I used to paint myself as medusa...now the self portraits are symbolic variations of having negative thoughts but also thoughts about forbidden love or reflections on life's travails. Suffering is part of the human condition. Life is not easy...life as an artist can be down right impossible but totally worth it.
Here are excerpts from my thesis:
The Imaginary Integrity and Unity of Art
As an artist and subject in my work, I consider myself to be steward and ax man to the legacy of art history by cutting and serving up the reinvigorated past to be contemplated in context of the contemporary. Created out of “the anxiety of influence” and its effects on one’s artistic identity, these portraits develop from incongruous sources forced into an uncomfortable whole. In dealing with composite identities, the ontological is played out as a “hysical reality” within the small, illusionistically wrought oils. Nearly every subject in my paintings receives an additional set of eyes. The superimposed eyes are like a mask, thus providing the opportunity to role play, hide, or act out.
With scissors in hand, I compose from snippets from several hundred pictorial fragments scattered about me on the floor. What is created is a prototype collage of layered scraps with cut edges. Some are photographs of me while others are cut up illustrations from art history. Trompe l’oeil methods exaggerate the collaged source material by showing the differences between the layered images



Portrait painting is a genre in painting, where the intent is to depict the visual appearance of the subject. The portrait is expected to show the essence of the subject.
Like these artists before me, I am interested in the style, the vituosity, and the revelation of biographical content that these images reveal.

These paintings represent a joint exploration of collage, surrealistic devices, and the use of art historical techniques and methods. Postmodern allegory, the mechanics of collage verses pastiche. While being based upon the rules and laws of reality, the work experiments with what is identity.

My need to create from art history is not a about being a mere copyist. What has transpired is more of a strange faith or reverence for the art historical. Reinclusion of old masters techniques and painting language, renews and acknowledges their importance for present and future of art.
We can’t live in the past (as most realists have tried). Part of what allows something to continue to be meaningful is its ability to adapt or be seen in a new way

It is my aspiration to be an inventive painter. Working within the devices of surrealism, observation of realism, and the pursuit of the fantastic.

How did I come up with collage/appropriation/trompe l’oeil style? While searching for the best format to place my content, I had been trying to use the same art historical formats of portrait, allegory, and symbolism without much success in making them contemporary. In search of the armature, I rediscovered the artists’ first gallery, the refrigerator door. Upon the door were a sentimental photograph of my infant niece and the Christmas gift of magnets made from cut up discount art books. By moving some of these magnets over the photograph, the child’s eyes were covered with those from a Northern Renaissance portrait. A Boschian creature was placed on top of her head to serve as an ornamental hat. Lastly, a Durer Christ child and a Madonna’s hand scaled perfectly to that in the sentimental photo were placed on the arms in the photo. The completed the transformation was far more interesting than reality.
Amazingly, almost nothing works together, the rare balance between harmony of separate parts and complete chaos requires days to compose. My attraction to an image is chosen for religious connation, the ability to be humorous or grotesque, and their relevance to the myths of my choosing. Images from the past are provided with a postmodern and original twist through layering and juxtaposition.
Why quote art? citation style in painting .. “Appropriation art” stresses the intentionality of the act of borrowing and the historical attitude of the borrower. By building upon this accepted practice, my paintings incorporate these purloined fragments and keep the physical identity of the different motifs preserved from the overall unity. My second attempt sought to keep these elements separate and accentuated the disparate nature of the parts. Shortly after keeping these images as individual parts, an auspicious article hailed the collage as “…the major transformational tool of twentieth –century art, offering a way of arranging the parts to create a new hybrid whole.” This gave me faith that this was the correct path. While photographic collage is not the finished form of this work, playing off the truth and realism of photography by repainting of these images links those to the lineage of tromp l’oeil.
I paint to paint well. Donald Kuspit’s definition of “New Old Masterism” hails the return of beauty, “lost to avant-garde innovation,” but it returns carefully crafted and fully, “assimilated and accommodated” into the old avant-garde perversity. Such artists as Odd Nerdrum, Vincent Disiderios, and Julie Heffernan signal the return to the skilled, virtuoso use of paint. In postmodernism, the past is open again for renegotiations.
New artists, who are willing to take up the old challenge leveled at past genius, are invited to rewrite art history adding new chapters to the female legacy and sustaining old modes (portrait, allegory, and symbol), that may have slipped from our consciousness. This banner of new old masterism reinforces my own instincts about how contemporary art might relate with art’s historic legacy.


What’s with the eyes? One way I change identity: The treatment almost every character in my paintings receives is a new set of eyes. The eyes share a role in attribute, symbol, disguise, and the telling of a story through a story. To explain the fixation with eyes, it is important to know how the symbol of the eye is interpreted. Eyes represent clairvoyance, omniscience, or a gateway to the soul. Looking someone in the eye is a western custom of honesty. The opposite meaning, eyes covered by a helmet or veil, can mean mystery, not seeing the truth, or deceit. The eye takes the outside world into the inner, and can also project the inner world onto the outer. When the eyes are covered by the mask of second eyes, the eyes belonging to the subject have no issue of being confrontational; it is easy to confront if one is hiding behind a mask or pretending to be someone else. This acting or role playing has the ability to change the identity, providing age or wisdom to the innocent, or giving the viewer the knowledge of the subject’s emotional state, but with out the true self being made vulnerable.

The trompe l’oeil technique instigates an interaction between the artist and the viewer. The creator who hides the truth or underlying meaning and the curious viewer who imagines what possibilities might lie beneath. In order to stimulate the viewer’s need to interact, to pick up and look underneath, the impulse to pull up that which is covered; the edge of the image must be present. To emphasis this impulse, the paint of certain collaged elements is raised by applying layers of paint. The image is dependant upon the trompe l’oeil craftsmanship and the raised surface to seduce the eye and the hand. This creates a perfect forum to display different techniques from different periods of painting and include them in one painting.

wow... that was amazing.
I have so many more opinions now, I'm almost lost in them.

You are a true artist in my eyes. I have a hard time accepting some of the more modern artists as real, creative, intelligent, always thinking ARTISTS.
But you have that old style I've always revered and always dreamed of persuing.
I honestly, really respect you as a talented individual now.

Rock on...

On Copper... how interesting- Why copper? What are the pros and cons? I love your imagination... fantastic work!!!

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I am also known as UniquelyYours [link] ... glass jewelry

-Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you've imagined. -Thoreau [link]