Art as the Teacher/Mirror - Masks - Dominique Hurley

Art has often been my teacher, providing many opportunities to reflect on life. The last few days have given me rich fodder for looking inward as I spent over 24 hours working on masking my large colourful canvas with hundreds of little sticky pieces in preparation for the emergence of the owl spirit that has called me to assist it into Being. (I have already shared a bit of the process on this Fantastic Creature in my posts “Tidbits” and “Another Great Week at School“) . Indeed, I’ve learned as much about the technical aspects of masking as I have about the symbolism of the experience and authentic living.

Parallels with life:

We’ve all learned to wear masks to protect ourselves from being rejected and to try and manage what others think of us. Unfortunately, when we only present ourselves with our masks on, there is no way others can see who we truly are and therefore accept who we truly are. The result is that we can never feel unconditional love as we remain unknown by those around us: we don’t allow the seen-> accepted -> loved potential that can only exist when we tell/show the truth. I was thinking about this on my way home from school as I compared the masking film I was working with and the masks we wear:

the goal of masks is perfection – or the appearance of perfection – or protection
masks are a lot of work to create and maintain
their low-tack nature means they keep lifting, risking a frustrating and messy situation
their backing gets easier to peel off once you get into the habit and so masking becomes more automatic – beneficial for my in-class task, but not in life
the question is – is masking really worth it? could I have achieved better results without all that painstaking work – just by being more spontaneous or at least more direct by only using transfer paper to lay the lines down of what I wanted and creating around those?

I haven’t finished the process – stay tuned to see what other philosophical insights it may lead me to… Can you tell? I spend a lot of time in my head 🙂

Technical lessons:

For the fellow artists out there, here are a few tips if you’re going to use low-tack masking film, popular with airbrush artists. I used Artcoe Frisk Film – matte. It was recommended to me as a way to create nice crisp lines for my owl spirit.

draw your original design right on it or on a transparent paper, like tracing paper. That way you can use a light table to see through both and trace it onto the matting paper. The part of my design I had on thick brown paper had to be traced on transparent paper and then from that to the masking film
use a sharpie to trace shapes so that you can see the outline of your mask once you put it on your artwork. It’s very hard to tell in some lights, especially with matte, where my pieces are
if you have a zillion pieces, use transfer paper to get the design down on your surface – it will make placing the pieces easier and it washes right off – an easy job on acrylic paint
if using transfer paper, go over the original lines on your design with a different coloured sharp pencil or pen (if you use the same colour, you’ll easily lose track of which lines you’ve already transferred
it really is low-tack – make sure to press hard and don’t use paint that’s too liquidy as it will seep under. My pieces kept lifting… I can’t imagine using this on an upright canvas for airbrushing – they’d fall off…
it’s extremely hard to separate the clear sticky part from the paper – some of my pieces took 5 minutes or more, especially in the beginning – if you have over 100 pieces on your artwork, consider another approach. My average was 2 minutes per piece… I had about 200 pieces.
if you have an intricate design, it’s a good idea to number each piece on both your original design (make sure not to cut that one up so you have a guide) and on your pieces before you cut them

I am grateful for the exercise – I’m not sure I would approach this project the same way again, but I’m learning and that’s what exploration is all about.

The repetitive nature of this manual task did have a bonus – I needed something to keep my Left Brain engaged so that my Right Brain could get into the flow of creation all the while keeping me out of all the discussions happening around me in class. To do this, I listened to a lot of uplifting educational podcasts in those 24 hours – some from my Art Empowers Me e-course, from the free Product Publicity Virtual Summit (March 3-14), and my friend Jo-Anne Guimond’s inspiring podcast about her Gratitude Project on www.debozarko.com. My interview on that site will air March 20 – mark your calendars. Keeping my left brain engaged like that actually helps me step out of my own way so that I can connect with my art in a deeper way – sounds strange, but it’s true. During more creative (vs. repetitive manual tasks like today), I find kirtan music (Sanskrit meditation chanting) better.

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