“Cipher” – Bridging Digital and Traditional Media

When viewers encounter a portrait like "Cipher," they often see only the final result—a moment frozen in time, a face emerging from layers of media. But every artwork has its journey, and the process behind this piece reveals as much about artistic exploration as the enigmatic expression on the subject's face.

The Genesis of "Cipher"
My process often begins with photography—a discipline I've practiced for over 40 years. This foundation gives me a substantial archive of reference material that I can choose from. For "Cipher," I selected an image that captured a moment of emotional ambiguity—an expression that asks more questions than it answers. A studio session of a child often times reveals these expressions, especially when you first start the session before they begin to trust you and become more comfortable with you photographing them while mom and dad look on, it is initially a bit scary and intimidating for most children.

The selected photograph underwent initial transformation in Photoshop, where cropping and preliminary adjustments set the stage for deeper manipulation. From there, I brought the image into Corel Painter, where decisions about texture and representation began to take shape.

In Painter, I deliberately chose to retain elements of the digital canvas and texture—not as limitations to overcome, but as intentional breadcrumbs that acknowledge the digital stage of the journey. While many times I obliterate everything and start with an abstract background, I find no need to conceal these digital origins; rather, I embrace them as part of the authentic process.
The question I constantly navigate is: how photographic or how loose should this representation be? With "Cipher," I opted for a middle ground that preserves recognizable features while allowing artistic interpretation to breathe.

The bridge between digital and physical realms occurs through a simple bond paper print—not photographic paper, but something more receptive to further manipulation. This printed image found its home on a cradled panel constructed from repurposed wooden bleachers from the school where I teach—material with its own history of witnessing countless moments of human emotion.

Once adhered to this foundation, the real dialogue between media began. Layers of traditional pigments, pan pastels, graphite, plaster, oil pastels and tempera were applied and partially removed in a conversation between addition and subtraction. Each decision revealing or concealing different aspects of the image beneath.
The final stages involved encaustic application—molten beeswax mixed with damar resin and pigments—creating translucent layers that simultaneously reveal and obscure previous stages. This ancient technique, dating back to Egyptian funeral portraits, brings a luminous quality that no digital process can fully replicate, while preserving glimpses of every previous layer.

The Robert Henri Connection
When tasked with creating a piece for the "Robert Henri" themed exhibition, I found resonance between my multi-layered approach and Henri's philosophical stance on portraiture. Though our techniques differ greatly—Henri worked primarily in oils with bold brushwork—we share the pursuit of emotional truth beyond mere likeness.

Henri once wrote, "The object isn't to make art, it's to be in that wonderful state which makes art inevitable." The process I've described embodies this sentiment—a journey through different states of creativity, different media, different histories—all converging in a single work that invites the viewer to decode its layers of meaning.

Like the subject's expression in "Cipher," the artwork itself is intended to exist as a code—part digital, part traditional, part planned, part discovered—awaiting interpretation while preserving its essential mystery.