Put a Face on It

The only reason we have not been able to find value in “the other” is because we refuse to give them a face. How is that for a Thesis?!

Okay, I’ve learned things that make complete sense to me usually don’t make much sense to others. This is one of those things. I would write a thesis such as this and my mother (English major/teacher) would immediately inform me, people are regrettably unable to read my mind in order to connect the dots. So an explanation…

The first thing to interest me about participating in art was the human face. More specifically, the eye. In one of my first art classes the teacher proclaimed, “The hardest thing to draw is the human eye”. The reason? Because it’s the window to the soul. “When you look into someone’s eyes'”, my teacher explained, “you are in connection to their deepest self”. So I decided to study the human face. Specifically the eye. This drove my future teachers nuts. You are not supposed to start with the eye when doing portraiture. Long story short, when doing portraiture you are supposed to start with the outline of the head and face before going into any detail. So starting with a very detailed looking eye was a big “No, no”…

Oh well

Since the gauntlet was thrown, I have drawn hundreds and hundreds of portraits. I LOVED looking through magazines, such as National Geographic, and cutting out pictures of faces. I was able to study the faces of thousands upon thousands of people. They all were fascinating. I saw happiness. I saw love. I saw pain. I saw sorrow. Each face gave me insight about humanity. One of my subjects contained a stare so piercing I felt the need to replicate his eye so it’s sharpness could be seen no matter how close you got. Another contained a stare so outside this world I took out the iris altogether. And the last one, the final portrait I ever painted, was filled with a sadness no amount of deep blue could ever reach.

I am actually intimidated by the human face, often most comfortable studying it through a picture or a lens. I struggle to look directly at others, even those I love, because when my eyes connect to another I get lost. I feel I am being allowed into a holy place. Of course it flows away from just the eyes and is seen in every feature of the face. Each wrinkle gives insight. They can communicate a life of happiness or a life of struggle. The best show both. To be honest I am struggling to articulate what exactly it is I see in the face. In some ways I think it’s wrong for me to try.

The face is a mystery. A mystery that always reveals one thing. Humanity. When flipping through the faces of National Geographic I saw countless shades of humanity. We couldn’t possibly be able to explore every aspect of humanity because no human is capable of discovering the depth we glimpse when looking into the eyes of another. But the very fact we see “the other” is enough to assign value. And assigning values to “the other” is the only way we will be able to get out of the mess we are in today.