about the facial mutations series:

"A man's face is his autobiography. A woman's face is her work of fiction."
~Oscar Wilde

this series is an exploration of the things we show and hide in our faces. beneath every smile is a sadness. in every grimace happiness lurks. what we reveal and challenge others to find out about us intrigues me. my works layer the depth and chaos we cannot really explain to people, but it comes out nonetheless, without our knowledge more often than not. the social stigma of loss and pain are evident in long pauses and time passed. using vintage photographs where the subject had to wait for long periods of time before a portrait was taken made sense to me. plus, in not knowing the individuals, i was able to objectively make the person's face more my own. try as i might, i have still be unable to create these pieces using images of my own family. which furthers the ideas i am exploring in that faces reveals stories when you don't know them already. overlapping genders and ages, as well as mediums [paintings versus photographs] i am able to juxtapose the reality of life with the fictional version we develop around a particular image. my art is about trying to tell a story without background information; a story about a single moment trapped in time.

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