The Masks We Wear

We all wear masks. Some are polished and carefully maintained...

Others are improvised on the spot, pulled into place when life becomes messy, painful, or uncertain. We learn early which parts of ourselves are welcome in public and which are better left hidden.

​This series, The Masks We Wear, explores that uneasy relationship between appearance and reality.
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​Created with acrylic paint and metallic foil on canvas, each portrait hovers somewhere between presence and absence. The faces emerge from layered fields of color and texture, their features partially concealed, partially revealed. Metallic surfaces catch the light and shift as the viewer moves, much like the personas we present to the world. What seems solid from one angle becomes elusive from another.

TThe eyes are often obscured, hollow, or glowing. Expressions are difficult to read. Are these masks protecting the person beneath them, or imprisoning them? The answer changes from painting to painting—and perhaps from viewer to viewer.

What interests me most is the tension between what is visible and what remains hidden. We spend so much energy studying the mask: the smile, the composure, the carefully curated story. Yet the most compelling questions live in the shadows surrounding it.
What fears lurk behind the façade?
What grief remains unspoken?
What hopes, desires, and contradictions are concealed beneath the surface?
The masks themselves are unsettling, but perhaps not as unsettling as the possibility that there is something far more complex behind them. Something vulnerable. Something wounded. Something beautifully human.

Or perhaps the opposite is true.
Perhaps the mask is the invention, while the shadows hold the truth.
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As I worked on these paintings, I found myself wondering which is more unsettling: the face we choose to show the world, or the parts of ourselves we work so hard to hide.
I'm still not sure I know the answer.
And maybe that's the point.