Trying to accurately portray a person can feel unsafe. You better hope you are depicting a person as they see (or want to see) themselves or they better have wonderful self-esteem.
Makeup can pull from both fields of fine art and cosmetology. Cosmetics require their own variation of painting techniques but the person (the canvas), becomes the fine art piece. Humans are mixed media, composed of so many different materials. Psyche comes out to play.
Painting still life objects don’t necessarily hold up a mirror to the things you might like or not like about yourself. Painted portraits reflect something that mirrors, cameras, and in-person interactions cannot. Yet, somehow makeup application can feel like the ultimate active self-portrait. When we do our own makeup, we confront ourselves. We then travel around and showcase our work, ourselves.
We are portable self-portraits, our lives imitating our art. Like it or not, we are all up for interpretation.
