April 26, 2020: Twelve Masks -

So, as I've mentioned, I used to find people wearing masks scary, and now I find people NOT wearing masks scary.

I started painting a series of mask paintings a few weeks ago, back in my youthful "masks are scary" phase. They were scary, or scared themselves.

I thought of them not as people, but as masks-wearing-masks.

Then they started to change, to become friendlier, more human, less mask-like.

When I painted the first, scary ones, it was just to get something out of my system. I didn't think of them as the beginning of a series.

Now I'm painting them for fun.

I didn't think I'd want any of them on the wall of the studio.

I thought I'd get rid of them right away, exorcise some demons and go back to landscapes. But instead, they are my little group of companions, just like the girl dogs of the Resting Bitch Face series were my companions.

Apparently, I paint series when we suffer a national cataclysm. (The companionable girl dogs were painted to cheer me up after the Kavanaugh hearings.)

I will not mind if I don't have to paint too many series for a while, after this one.

They are failing mightily at social distancing.