The concept for Cosmetic Makeup is to explore the interactions that occur between people. The faces of the two people have fairly blank expressions that do not betray their personality. Instead, the images behind the faces tell the story of their personalities. The man is careful and grounded and earthy, the woman is adventurous and high-flying and liquidy. Hidden rune symbols also indicate these character traits, the symbols for home, harvest and community appear above the mans head and the energy, adventure and motion symbols appear above the woman's head.
The contrasts and complements of the two personalities are echoed in the compositional design. The faces separated by space, are still locked in together like puzzle pieces. The man is near the bottom of the picture and his imagry occupies almost half the edge of the painting while the woman is near the top and her imagery only touches a small portion of the base of the painting.
The sky was done in a number of steps. First a light red wash was put down. Then, rubber masking fluid was applied in spatters for the stars. Over the course of a week I applied three transparent glaze layers, red (alzarian), blue (ultramarine), and green (viridian), keeping the paper (which was stapled to a heavy wood frame) tilted so the colour saturation was highest near the top of the picture. Then the latex mask was peeled off with an eraser revealing the light pink stars and moon. Each star was finsihed with a ring of light red, green or blue to make them shimmer. The moon was filled with a deep purple.
Cosmetic Makeup, watercolour 22 x 30" cold press, 2008 (No. 2015)
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