In early concussion recovery, I began to paint faces obsessively. They emerged purely from imagination, often with left and right sides startlingly different, and haunting, painful gazes.
There is a specific region of the brain, the fusiform face area, which processes facial recognition. Visual processing, bilateral coordination, and emotional mapping felt somehow resonant and vital to my healing.
I painted each face as a process of discovery, allowing myself to not know the imagined person’s gender, background, traumas, or hopes — a practice that resonated with my Buddhist metta practice of attempting to meet each being with compassion and curiosity. Most of these were painted during the lockdown and social distancing period of the COVID-19 pandemic, at a time of isolation.
