Original artwork description:

Expressionist oil painting mainly painted with palette knife, on a rollered slate black background.

This is the latest in the "Mask" series of oil paintings.

We all wear masks in our daily lives to protect our vulnerabilities, but if if you look closely enough these vulnerabilities are always seeping out, the mask is always, sometimes imperceptibly, slipping to reveal more than we would like.

The title refers to my deliberate attempts to stretch the face of this model. I like moving the same face around to create different emotions and to say different things. I like this idea of playing around with the same face.

This face is the elongated face in "Stretching It A Bit", pushed forward to distort the shape in "Worse For Wear" and pushed back and upwards in "One of the Great Roles".
I also use different colours for different emotional effect too.

The title refers to being still emotionally troubled by the past and growing up in the military conflict that was the "troubles" in Northern Ireland.

Materials used:

oil painting on linen canvas

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