SOFIA PAYMASTER

“Stained Cheeks”

A realistic oil painting on canvas representing historical northern and southern dynasties in China between 386 to 589 CE displays ancient makeup and beauty of women. The composition captures the distinctive features females would use in their makeup as they utilise various symbols on their lips and a huadian on their forehead to represent their specific dynasty. This work explores how cultural elements are used in conjunction with makeup to create distinct looks that represent bloodline.

“Bhindi”

40cm x 40cm

A realistic oil painting depicting the beauty in Indian culture. Being half Indian myself, I wanted to capture the importance of cultural makeup and accessories in the practise of daily Indian culture. This work portrays female Indian beauty with traditional accessories such as a head scarf which connotes purity, gold bangles which portray family status and wealth, and a bindi which represents wisdom and unity.

“The Veil”

A realistic portrait painting, oil on canvas, explores cultural beauty within the Islamic culture capturing female beauty through the eyes of a woman framed by a black veil. While the veil represents respect and tradition of the culture, it allows the eyes to present the power of one’s emotions. The hands are intentionally placed towards the eyes to give the main focus towards the eyes. Due to using various neutral hues and tones neutral, a gold bangle was added to create a variety of values.

“Dotted Lines”

A realistic oil painting that explores female beauty and cultural identity in the Asante Tribal culture in Ghana represents culture and beauty with the use of colours, lines, and patterns on the face. The repetition of dots and lines on the face in conjunction with colours symbolises one’s social ranking, religion, and tradition which creates individualism. Red expresses energy and white embodies purity. The incorporation of symbols and bright colours is also visible on the purple neck scarf.

“Broken Figure”

A representation of a woman’s physique was made using steel wire. This embraces the beauty of the woman’s body. The spacious arrangement of wire represents fragility, in contrast the use of strong wire represents strength. I created an abstract sculpture that lacks perfection to capture the raw characteristics, further exaggerating how no one is perfect. The sculpture has no face to bring the audience's focus to the shape of the figure and to utilise an abstract element of the floating wires.

“Three Faced”

An oil self-portrait that explores human emotions displaying emotional identity by integrating three basic human expressions; happiness, sadness and anger. This composition captures and unveils the complexity of emotions due to every individual exhibiting them uniquely. I conveyed my three fundamental emotions through a smooth transition to show the contrast between facial expressions. I was inspired by a street artist called Rems 182 who utilizes multiple faces in her works similarly.

“Clowned”

A digitally manipulated print of my psychological fear of clowns replicate emotional and mental identity that make up an individual. I used myself as the subject and transformed myself using makeup which I further enhanced using Procreate. Makeup allows me to remodel my face structure and feature whilst digital manipulation enhances fine lines, colour opacity, and details. The purpose of this work is to capture my own fear and hopefully provoke a form of distress and terror for the audience.

“Dolled Up”

A digitally manipulated print represents my fear of porcelain dolls. Fears are hidden emotions however, they are able to represent one’s mental identity. Using myself as a subject, I transformed myself into a doll using makeup and then enhanced features of the photograph such as my eye shape and neck digitally on Procreate to further resemble a doll. I wanted to display a human-like doll hence not distorting features like my skin tone however, I made my eyes wider.

“Constrained”

A digitally manipulated photograph that displays one of my fears revolving around social anxiety. The rope symbolises being trapped, hence the reason as to covering a majority of the face and mouth. Utilising my eyes manipulates the composition to replicate a self-portrait and to also create a focal point for the audience. I manipulated the photograph digitally on Procreate. The purpose of this work is to allow the audience to relate to the similar feeling of having socialising fears as myself.

“The End”

An exploration of one of the most popular fears amongst the human population which is death has been displayed as a realistic digitally manipulated photograph. The photograph was modified on Procreate. The skull connotes human death as it is a widespread symbol representing the deceased. The vast use of black is a colour analogy that represents mystery and loss which links to death. The contrast between the white skull and black features and background creates visual perception and depth.