The Flesh Mask

Dresden versus a Vampire - Skindeep
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In the Dresden series, the vampires often wear what is known as a flesh mask, while underneath they are horrible creatures made of nightmares and black goo.  Meanwhile the flesh mask is this beautiful exterior that is only skin deep.  However it's very powerful and influential on their prospective prey.

There are lots of people with flesh masks and while there may not be a literal oozing monster beneath their skin, there are many who are monsters inside.  Often these monsters are only looking skin deep themselves, focused on fleshly matters, largely unaware that there is much beneath the flesh mask as they often don't want to look beneath it in themselves.

As an artist, many people ASSUME that I'm a glutton for the flesh mask, and that what I find beautiful must be what I'm attracted to, but this is often projection of their own thinking.
What attracts me has little to do with the physical. In fact I've learned to avoid men who are classically handsome, because it tends to come with a lot of entitlement and narcissism, more so than in women who are constantly berated even when they are beautiful.  (But I still have a weakness for Dean in Supernatural - only human) Personally, I love brains... and not in a zombie eating them sort of way. My erogenous zone is my mind and emotions.  Pics of hot guys are boring, and leave me thinking... asshole... asshole... asshole... (Didn't like Dean or Aragorn at first glance - it was their manner that sold me) When I look at someone beautiful I think "I want to paint that", while those focused on flesh think "I want to have sex with that." It's disconcerting when people project that onto me, when it's not what's going on in my head at all. Likewise I can love someone and not have sex with them. I love my dog... I don't LOVE my dog. To me sexual attraction comes with emotional attachment.

Artists by nature attract people who are in love with their own flesh mask and want to be painted as they see themselves.  Photographs don't always cut it for them, because they often have things about themselves that they want to be better.  So the artist is left with the dubious task of reading their mind.  You draw someone as they are and the person complains it's ugly because they have freckles. Then you paint them without freckles or their lazy eye, and then they claim it doesn't look like them.  It's one of the many reasons why portraits are a pain in the ass. It is often the most in demand, but that check comes smothered in stress and picky narcissism much of the time. Not universally but enough to make you hesitate before taking the commission.

On the flip-side, I have known some beautiful people who were beautiful to the core, but could not see their own beauty.  When I look at them, I see not just their exterior but a beautiful heart.  I WANT to paint them, so they can see through my eyes how beautiful they are to me.  This is often why I have a select few models and I prefer to have ones that I like as a person.  Somewhat unintentionally how I feel about the person I'm drawing tends to come out in the final piece whether I want it to or not.  There are some lovely photos I've taken of people and never painted because they were just not good people, which became evident later. Some emotions get translated into lines on a subconscious level, and it just shows.  This is one of the reasons that illustration work often comes across as lacking, unless it's something I really enjoy like the Pantheon Card Game.  There's a big difference in projects that you are passionate about and those you are not.

There are so many preconceptions about being a fantasy artist.  Many believe you must be schizophrenic (not living in reality as opposed to multiple personalities which is another disorder.).  However that is more inclined to abstract artists than realists like myself.  There is a series of paintings by an artist named Luis Wain of cats. The more he fell into schizophrenia, the less that cat looked like a recognizable feline form.

Even when I paint or draw something that is fantastical, I still try to make it logically work.  It has to look like something that could exist with reasonable muscular and skeletal structure extrapolated from things that do exist already in nature.  You cannot have supernatural without an element of natural. It takes nature and then adds to it. I believe that it was Tom Clancy who said, "The difference between fiction and reality is that fiction has to make sense." The same goes with artwork, and that is not created by a mind devoid of reason, but hard wired with it.  This was a frustrating quality to those who have tried to manipulate my mind and failed.

One of the projections of people in the flesh masks is that artists are promiscuous, drug users, and alcoholics.  While this may be true for some, it's a generalization. At conventions I tend to drink far more than I do at home, and I've seen that in other artists as well.  But since this is where people see us, they think this is an everyday thing, when in actuality it's more like a couple times a year. As for promiscuous, again that's a generalization.  Not that it isn't true of some, but personally I can count the number of people I've been with on one hand, while the people attributing this to me might need to pull out more digits, maybe some toes, and an abacus... to each their own.  As for drugs, although I advocate the legalization of pot, I have never actually done it.  My stance is based on things like the failure of prohibition, and that it only strengthens organized crime and it's not the government's right to protect people from themselves. I'd rather the government protect me from rapists and murders, than Shaggy and Scoobie Doo watching movies with a joint and cookies.  One is a threat to society. One is a personal choice, and I am proof that sometimes people can and will choose not to partake if it's important to them. I've been around it and said no... imagine that. God forbid we take personal responsibility... yeah, artists can do that too!  It's almost like we're real people!

Another misconception of those intent on flesh masks is a projection of temperamental responses. In general any expression of emotions is considered this, and instantly attached to an extreme even if it is completely within the parameters of normal emotional expression.  I am expressive, and I am emotional, because I am human.  The only real variable is the social expectations and social views being pressed on you constantly. How would you feel if you were constantly told that the labor you did was not worth paying for? Many artists would love to make minimum wage, but try to get paid and people balk or try to get it cheap from college kids. There's only so long that you can be taken advantage of that you don't start to stand up for yourself, and the moment that you do, you become the bad guy, difficult, or what-not. Often temperamental is a great way to justify marginalizing artists, and to not take them or their very valid concerns seriously.  Somehow because what we do seems enjoyable (even if it's hair-pulling stressful at times), it does not qualify to the population at large as genuine work, even though it's a specialized skill-set that the majority of the population cannot do. These workers wanting $15 an hour minimum wage ... what if they were told they should do it for free for the "exposure".  That would be absurd... but I've done jobs that when added up equated to $2 an hour, and people still didn't want to pay, because it took 2 weeks concentrated effort to do what they wanted me to do.  However if I said anything... labeled temperamental.  But with that income who can afford a lawyer to protect their interests?

One of the other drawbacks of being an artist is that it does require a certain amount of perception and emotional connection which is often a quality of empaths.  Empaths both attract and are the biggest threat to sociopaths. That core of what makes you able to create through understanding of nature and human nature, often also makes you a target for those adept at manipulating it.  Sensitivity which also seems to be a by-product or a driving force toward being an artist, for many artists, only worsens the potential for attracting users and obsessives. Not a quality for all artists, but even in those less sensitive, it still tends to attract a number of people wanting to ride on coat tails, and leech off success or potential success.

"Life of an Artist" ©1999 Lindsay Archer

At the end of the day, people try to dress artists in some social preconceived flesh mask, while often not bothering to get to know the person.  This can make artists fit the quintessential "misunderstood" perception, simply because many people aren't willing to try to understand. Meanwhile many artists are cognitive of masks and not fond of them.  Their expressions are often trying to remove those masks that much of the population adore, to see what's underneath, whether monster or beauty.  The flesh mask is all that is carnal: sex, physique, race, etc... it's all the superficial things that influence so much of us even subconsciously.  Meanwhile the core often goes overlooked.  That overweight man may not be a hunk, but he might be your soul mate, if you bothered to look beyond the flesh mask.  There are so many people who long to be good and are sucked into inherently bad situations because of flesh masks.  Those masks are the core of personality cults.  It all becomes about flesh: what you eat, how you dress, and other things that have little to do with the health of the soul.  So long as other people are making the call on what is good, people will contradict their own consciences to destructive means.  It takes something more than skin deep, but so many aren't willing to go there.  Even the people that I've known as self proclaimed "deep" people were skating the surface of carnal concerns. Often they were concerned about presenting a good flesh mask so that other people would think that they were good, while inside they were monsters.

I can't say that I've perfected it, but it's something I have observed and am reaching for in myself, meanwhile having other skins projected onto me in various patterns, instead of what's really there. Such is the life of an artist, trying to communicate that which we see and observe by shining our light, in a room full of people who hate the dark, while attracting moths, and hoping all the while that others are illuminated or will be as well. It's the only way to not have shadows, to shine.  It can't be hidden under a flesh mask. This makes you exposed or makes others want to cover it up, but it doesn't make it wrong. It's not an easy path or a popular one.