African Masks

As a child I was fascinated by African masks.  I saw them in the Field Museum and the Art Institute of Chicago, where I took summer classes during grade school and high school.  I also collected jazz and blues music. No one had to tell me, “black is beautiful”.  That was obvious.  It’s not surprising then that I eventually felt the need to express my appreciation for Afro-culture artistically.  The mystery and beauty of African masks made them an excellent vehicle for that exploration.

In African culture the mask, in ritual practice, serves the wearer and the community.  It is used to celebrate life’s transitions, to heal, and to offer gratitude to the spirits.  It connects the people with the spirit world, with the unseen but profoundly felt power that touches all life.  During the ritual the mask wearer becomes the entity represented by the mask—a transcendent and transubstantitive experience for the wearer and the group.

Did the spirit of the masks inhabit me as I selected and painted them?  I don’t know.  But their visual impact and the feeling they emanate determined my choices.  I pulled eleven from over 150 images collected during museum visits and on-line research.  Some tribal sources and mask types overlap.  I would have preferred them all to differ in source and purpose but visual and emotional uniqueness of each mask was, for this project, more important than displaying cultural variety.  For me, painting each mask was an artistic challenge that stimulated new creative directions in composition, color and brushwork.

I hope you enjoy the singular mystery of each of these eleven African masks.