PTSD/12

Abstract

My art explores the question, what does a person’s facial expression attempt to inform us about what may be going on inside? What feelings are being experienced? How and more curiously why, are the feelings arranged into a particular expression on the face? This question has fueled my curiosity for many years and has influenced much of my figurative work. I consider human facial expressions to be a form of semiotic. Our facial expressions are crucial to maintaining social engagement with others. The face can form expressions used to communicate feelings and emotions without words or sound. Facial expressions can be warm and welcoming, cold, and distant, apathetic, or indifferent, we can sense happiness on a person’s face or anger and fear. My work endeavors to translate human emotion through what I call “the landscape of the human face”. The recent pandemic has given my work a new challenge. As most have donned masks, my interest in reading expression has been reduced to only eyes. The amazing thing is that with two thirds of the human face covered by a mask covering the nose and mouth, the intended emotion is still completely understandable and conveyed through only the eyes. As the mask somehow causes us to now look at each other more closely as we communicate, we may pay closer attention and in turn become more aware of a person’s emotional state, something that may have been otherwise overlooked by the simultaneous reading of the whole face, eyes nose and mouth. Sometimes less is more. Although the recent pandemic has curtailed our “normal” social engagement it may have heightened the intensity of our limited communication. The mask may have offered a shield of sorts, providing more confident. communication through perceived anonymity.