Fire Mask Painting

Black, red, pink, tan and white. Colors of darkness, life, flesh, earth and cold. So many contrasts, so many extremes for one woman. Her shoulders are naked, her neck is fragile, her face is delicate and of a subtle carnation, her eyebrowns are high, her chin is finely scuplted, her lips are as sensual as tempting, perfectly drawn. There is some nobility in this woman. And some of this beauty which can be recognized even when it is behind a mask. This woman is alone on this painting, strongly contrasting with a white background, made of ether and mist, impenetrable. When she appears somewhere, the world disappears… in a white lime. In the midst of the darkness, as Dante taught us, everything is white. This woman is alone on this painting and something is devoring her : something made of night and flammes, of red and black. Above her face this tenebrous body is like a gyre of ichor or a flow of molten lava barely cooled. Is it a feather headdress or are they her hair in a sophisticated hairstyle ? Who could say if this shadow springs from her front or if it tries to engulf in it ? Is this murk caressing or gripping on her ? Is it waves or claws ? Impossible to say, this blackness seems so much to be part of her. And of course, there is this mask. A winged mask. Butterfly or Phenix, symbols of transformation, symbols of a beauty born to shine and die again and again. Black and red again, sparkling and dark, always this dusky magma, like rubies in the night. This burning mask has settled on her eyes, turning her look into a raging ember. This mask which seems to devour her for ever hidden face, melting with her eyes, which are so difficult discern, which are pitch black like bottomless mine shaft. Going with the mask there is a necklace. A necklace made of the same material as the mask, of the same color, of the same intensity. A necklace which takes and tightens her throat, not a loosy and broad one, no, a real constraint, a dominion, a burn. And in between, like a bridge, her purpurin lips. Is this mask a protection ? Or an invitation ? To mask oneself, it is to free onself. One gets masked for a ball, to ignore the rules. Masked balls also have the sulphurous reputation to allow licentiousness and libertinism. One wears a mask in orgies to mix, to forget, to get free. But the red and the black of this paintings, on her neck and her eyes, are obsessive and worrying. This mask, these colors, is it the Red Death watching us ? Are we all the Properos of a dying world ? Something is brewing here. Embers. Something is leaking. Blood. Then these questions hit you in the face like fists full of steel : was this face pulled off and this throat cut ? Did this woman wear these accessories to hide herself or is she parading cut up and skinned alive, showing her raw sore in deafening silence and void, in an absurd masked ball where nobody would be willing to know if this brightness comes from jewels or from wounds.

Painting:Oil on Canvas

Original:One-of-a-kind Artwork

Size:35.4 W x 47.2 H x 1.2 D in

Delivery Time:Typically 5-7 business days for domestic shipments, 10-14 business days for international shipments.