expressing the human experience via the human head
Earlier in spring of this year, my partner expressed her annoyance with me while watching a movie. I had been verbally admiring different aspects of various actors heads, whether the actual stars or extras with comments such as 'wow, that person has a really amazing shaped cranium'. I wasn't aware how obsessive I had become, but I guess I had been doing this quite some time, and even after not wanting to be an annoyance it would be a difficult habit to break. I would become self aware of how so much of my thinking revolved around the human head. I would be at the grocery store fixated o
the shape of the cashiers nose, her jaw structure admiring and thinking how cultural specific to a filipino native it was. Or when at my neighbor's having a mutual revealing conversation, I would become entirely distracted by the plush pink of his face as if if were marinated in a peachy transparent lemonade. I nodded as he spoke, but I just wanted to experience that color for myself. I put a notepad in the bathroom for when I get those ideas to have access to write it down instantly, but I found myself filling it with little doodles of heads. In my neighborhood, taking my routine morning walk to start the day, it has become one of research and inspiration looking into every person that I pass by. At first when becoming self conscious of this obsessiveness, I was uncomfortable. I felt it was unhealthy, and I'm still not quite sure if it isn't. I took test to the artwork which has always been a reference point whether or not I'm navigating life correctly, and it didn't feel right focusing on anything else. And I did try. So here I am embracing it beginning with life, and expressing it through art. And now I see it as a blessing, to start the day eager to experience it. I get excited to walk the world in this way, seeing and meeting new people all the time absorbing some aspect of the human experience whether visual inspiration on the surface of the face, or thoughts, ideas, emotions, words, and so on that come from within. Within the head as the result of a human psyche. And this is where I find myself in this exploration, in this expression of not the obvious human head… but the human experience via the human head. There is the anatomical structure to explore, beginning with the skeleton of the skull/cranium layered in muscle, tissue, fat and skin. This collaborated with aesthetic principles of drawing and painting creates a world to be explored and made tangible in the form of art work, but I want more. I see potential for a world underneath the surface that I would like to give a face to as well. A world of the mind and all its psychology and emotions. To create a portrait that is human, all too human inside and out. 
