An update to the progression of this painting.  I think this painting is close to completion, after about 5 weeks of work. 

 

I'm letting this one rest now, as working on it has inspired a bigger series of screaming faces.  I've enlisted fellow painters, friends, family and students to pose, and have begin work on several new pieces.  I'll post photos of these as they progress.

Here's a bigger picture of the nearly completed painting.

Photos from the opening of the painting competition at the Triton Museum in Santa Clara.  The large self portrait below received a Gold Award.  It had great placement at the show too, right inside the door.

For the past few months I have been developing drawings and paintings around the idea of merging emotionally charged faces with patterns or other seemingly irrelevant objects. 

I photograph my own face, recreating feelings and thoughts that evolve into an expression.  I then work from these photographs, building up the paintings slowly with a number of very thin glazed layers.  By my choice of painting method, this series refers to the conventions of portraiture as practiced by the old masters.  Yet in a way, I am merging two genres, adding an element of performance by using my own face to produce the expressions of each different reaction, and perhaps creating disturbing images that concern disturbing perceptions. 

These are two of the first paintings from this series. 

   

As these paintings neared completion, I began to feel that they are more dark than perhaps I had intended.  After that, I began work on the following piece, in which I am attempting to lighten it up a bit, not just to protray the emergency emotion, but to convey a shift in perception.

This photograph shows the first week of painting on this piece.  I will upload new images to show the painting as it progresses from week to week. I'd be interested in hearing what anyone thinks of these images, the idea, or anything else.

 

 

  

The image on the right shows a progression of ten days of work.