I was painting my face for practice with oils in the most basic way possible. I intended this to be an exercise and had no pre-conceived idea of how this would evolve. It is a self portrait not because it is my likeness but because in everyway it looks like me and looking at it feels like it would to look at me. I’m a fruitless doll bearer with a shoddy mask of Saint Lucy’s spooned out eyes. The heart may be exposed and the legs on the floor but I promise neither are for sale and I’ll use them later if I need them. Using functional skeletal parts has always been my way of saying I have stripped to the bare essentials. I like to leave bone showing: it connects life and death, it emphasis the bare starkness of reality. I think of death as a beauty enhancement.