le grand tatouage

behind the mask - /23

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Don and I collaborated on this piece... He drew the right side of his face and I continued with digital processing to interpret his artistic vision. Don is a poet and artist who has done some very unusual self-portraits in the past. I thought it would be great if he were to convert half of his face into an illustration, and I was very pleased when he came back with this...

Don is interested in Bonsai's and has a big collection of them, I thus used bonsai roots with supports for the neck to make the image balance.

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le grand tatouage

e3 d stevnsn

 

i write the masque

my precious charade

 

with every little game i fake

with every tile i put in place

 

le grand tatouage

for a pretty face

 

but i, no doubt, cannot perceive

how life is writing me

 

behind the masque

lifting tiles so carefully placed

 

purchase freedom from darker space

my petty occupations

 

beneath a fool’s moon

dance lunacies seventy and two

 

 

Windhoek, 7 January 2014 e3, 08.01.14

with a debt to Jalálu’d-Din Rumi:

Love’s a stranger to earth and heaven too; In him are lunacies seventy-and-two

 

Done