Portraits?

I finished this piece back in 2014. At the time, I was super stoked with it (to be honest, I still am), but it is amazing to see how my style progresses but also stays the same. I love the juxtapositions in things like this. On one hand you have the super simple skull looking away from the viewer. On the other hand you have the more detailed hand kind of coming out at the viewer.

I chose these two images in particular because I’ve always been really into art history, and historically, the face and the hands were shown in portraits to convey emotion, power, femininity, etc. I’m a huge fan of drawing hands for this reason. It’s a nod to the artists of old amongst other reasons I’ll probably discuss in future posts.

Why the distortion? Hey, that’s my style. Why the placement? There might have been a reason at the time (I can get pretty cryptic behind my reasons for doing certain things in a piece), but I know for sure I wanted one element breaking the plane of the green background while the other stayed inside it. I know what it means to me, but I also like to let the viewer make up their own mind on the decisions I make and the meanings behind those decisions.

This is one of my favorite pieces I have done. It’s simple yet showcases some skill, it keeps with my love of saying “screw your normal sizing conventions”, and it makes use of some paper that probably would have otherwise been thrown away. Sometimes I hate naming pieces, so I just picked the element that conveyed the most basic meaning behind the images, “Portraits”.

*Fun fact about this piece, I used old credit card applications that I had gotten in the mail for the skull and hand bits of paper.

This piece is also for sale! If you’re interested in purchasing or would like to know more about dimensions and whatnot, hit me up in the “Contact” area at the top of the page.