My paintings identify and highlight key facial emotions and body gestures. I want to sensitize the viewer to subtle differences in eye shape and inner lip line that are not immediately obvious. I want to explore the micro expressions that move rapidly across the face through the course of daily events. The paintings strive to display the relationship between performers and audience members. My paintings reveal how a face 'as the mask slips' betrays emotions. I am also drawn in by the words, signs and symbols associated with social expression, whether it is in the context of a Jazz performance, string quartet, or opera recital, and even a physics colloquium or live action role playing game. My work links the intimate, internalized world of the subject with the shared world of physical properties like daylight and perceived inferred or imagined perceptual constraints that shape our visual field. My work comes out of questions in machine vision and a fascination with the drawn line and intense color.
Pamela Davis Kivelson