THE SMILE / BEHIND THE SMILE (diptych)

All my passion is for portrait painting, but I suggest my work being a performance rather than traditional portraiture. I perform myself an image that has inspired me, and as a final outcome I paint this transformed reflection on canvas. I do not paint a portrait of anybody, I work with a symbol of emotions or feelings. My paintings might be associated with images from art history, but I avoid any direct references, I only mark a trace, a hint what this image may have been related to. I identify the monochrome palette in my portraits with anonymity of the image, it is in a middle of nowhere.