Because I have Asperger's, I struggle with the human face. I can't recognize people very well, which is a disgrace for an artist! So that's what I'm going to geek out on. What, exactly, do people look like? Oh, I know what the proportions are supposed to be like. I know what a skull looks like. And I know how to draw what I see. But what makes a person look like themselves? And how do you paint their relationship to the world they live in, the heart connection to the universe?
People are not islands unto themselves. Writers have known that since forever, but psychologists are just beginning to figure that out. Geneticists, too. The idea that the expression of your genes could be influenced by how you grow up and your life choices, well, that's newly expressed in the world of science as epigenetics.
How to express that in painting?
I'm messing with lost edges, with color, with what the eyes do, with levels of detail, with setting. It's jolly fun.