Moonbathing

"Moonbathing"
10x15 inches
watercolor
Prints, details, and original available -click here-

It is said that to be touched by the moon's rays in slumber is to court lunacy. I look up at the moon on a still night, and feel that spiderweb trailing of silver light across my face. No heat like the caress of the sun. No sign of that ghostly trailing of light except what my imagination fills. A peace steals across the room, the stillness of meditation, of delving down within.

Cast off the masks, the faces for the daylight. Second skins. This face is for happiness. This face is for responsibility. This for necessity, for presentation, for expectation.

One by one, set the masks aside, like sentimental necklaces tucked into a jewelry box, each one a present gifted by a time, a person, a place, a need. Remembered and hoarded. Until suddenly the box is overflowing. The garnets glitter seductively, the jade beckons with a mossy caress of comfort.

In the moonlight that pierces through the window, they suddenly look like plastic and glass nestled in the velvet.

Which face was real? A bare face is a forgotten sensation now. Naked and vulnerable.

Turn aside, move to the silvered panes. Tilt the face up to bathe in that primal light of the moon, to let the silver fingers trail across brow and nose and lip. More delicate than a cobweb. More intimate than the touch of the dearest lover. She lays a silver mask with her silver threads. The only mask that matters.

Open the eyes. It's invisible in the night. It melts in the sunlight, and leaves in its wake

freedom.

* * *
Walk-through for this painting:
Concept (Sketching)
Day 1 of Painting (Background and Setting)
Day 2 of Painting (Main Figure)
Day 3 of Painting (Finishing up the details)