The human face has its own language, with an ability to convey an endless list of emotions and feelings through its various contortions. It’s an instinctive language, one which is universal and not bound by cultural differences or nationalistic upbringings. As we learn and develop our understanding of this language, we learn how to control it and how to speak through it. After a while it becomes a tool that we implement in our everyday lives and use for our own devices - its initial instinctive nature is open to manipulation and deception. 
 
Yet there are certain emotions that remain pure in this visual language, emotions that seem to take the face to the extremes of that language and force their way through to the surface no matter the subjects will on the matter. In particular two emotions that have this effect sit at opposite ends of the scale to each other - immense pleasure at one end and at the other end intense pain. 

Yet to fully appreciate one it is almost impossible to do so without an apprehension of the other. The two seem intrinsically bound, like two sides to a coin they occupy the same space and come to define each other. 
 
This work is about exploring the relationship these two emotions through exertion, the passage from one to the other and the language that flows between them. This portraiture is about capturing that moment in time that is pure and untamed, a face that has removed itself from the control of the sitter and shows a face enveloped by one single emotion devoid of all other thoughts. It’s that single authentic emotion devoid of control that strips the sitter bare and shows the viewer a part of them that is immensely personal - a glimpse at an identity that has been denuded of so much that comes together to sculpt and project the idea of oneself.