Behind The Mask:

Throughout my experiments within my mask module, I took a little bit of a twist. Although I started off exploring masks from all over the World/different cultures I then thought to myself, what about the masks we wear every single day? By this I mean our invisible masks, we wear these masks to cover up certain feelings that we don’t want people to see.

Behind The Mask Collection, Acrylic On Canvas.

Many,many things go on in people's lives day by day and we are clueless to them as we are sometimes made to feel that these emotions are not to be discussed as if they carried some kind of stigma with them but this is not the case! It is so important that we mark and highlight how crucial it is to open up and talk to each other whether it's about: mental health, disability, sexuality and so on.

Brave Face, 50x40cm.

I decided to create a series of paintings know as 'Behind the mask'. My invisible masks cover a variety of different situations in life, such as: today’s face, depression, domestic violence, paranoia, issues within fertility, hearing loss/disability and more. I choose to cover these topics as after doing bits of my research I felt that these situations kept popping up that seemed to be a lot harder for people to come forward and talk about. I want to let people know that every emotion you feel is normal, even all the bad ones from ‘shame' to sadness.

Feelings of Fertility, 90cmx90xm.

Even though my work along the way has been all focused on which masks who wears, I have decided I want to dedicate this series of painting’s to taking off our masks. All of my paintings have been painted using Acrylic paint on a primed canvas, my canvas’ all range in various sizes of scale which I have labeled under each photo of each painting. As a painter I enjoy using a dabbing technique during my work, this technique is made up of hundred of little dabs spread across a surface.Claude Monet and Auguste Renoir are two French artists who also used a similar dabbing technique in their art work, both of these artists were around in the 18th and 19th century and were a huge part of the Impressionist Movement. All of my masks have been exposed in an abstract style, I believe that this is down to my inspiration that I gained from artists: Kimmy Cantrell and Pablo Picasso.

The Loud Silence, 50cmx40cm. Antisocial, 79cmx30cm.

Since I plan on doing a painting upon sexuality I decided to do a mini ‘interview’ with my friend Beth, who is a gay woman. I asked Beth questions about what is was liking having to tell her family that she was gay and how it made her feel and then I asked other questions about the more negative side of things such as if she had ever experienced awful comments about her sexuality ext.. Beth told me how she was so nervous to tell her parents she was gay but how she felt so much better for it in the end. She also told me how she had had the odd comments towards her sexuality but not a lot. This interview gave me more background information and understanding towards my work.