Artist Shaina Craft created these visually unsettling paintings. She explains her process succinctly saying, “I paint my subjects’ faces after they have been altered, layered, and printed digitally.” The series seems to highlight the way we ‘read’ faces by making them nearly unintelligible. The frustration from the difficulty of settling on a pair of eyes or singling out a face underscores how differently we look at people’s faces compared to inanimate objects. Each painting forces the viewer’s eye to wander without allowing it a place to land. Craft’s style of painting turns these facial forms into something entirely unfamiliar, inviting viewers to revisit the idea of portrait painting.
