MASKS

Masks brought back from Nigeria where my parents served as missionaries from 1960 to 1963 have served as a subject in my visual work since 2015. I grew up with these masks and other artifacts on the walls of my childhood home. The masks always possessed a strange magnetism becoming both a mysterious yet familiar subject and always a reminder of my past and family. As I explored the subject of the masks one became male and the other female. In some cases the male came to represent my father and after his death the other one my mother, and a series of pairings emerged related to them as well as other pairings.