Brian Huntress
Girl Seated on the Floor by Brian Huntress  Image: A girl sits cross legged on the floor with her eyes popping out of her head and her tongue and teeth coming out of the bottom of her jaw. Her arms are lifted up and pointing down in a playful pose. She has dyed her hair blue and tied it up into space buns. She is silly, strange, and irreverent, beckoning the viewer to join her in this play. Should you remain serious and go about your day or embody some of the mischief, curiosity, and amusement presented by this figure?

In an alternative reading, this piece also fits into the Fractured Identity series. Her eyes leave their sockets, her teeth and tongue are outside of her mouth, and the composition forces the viewer to oscillate between multiple focal points; seeing her empty sockets, nose, and mouth as one, seeing her detached eyeballs and mouth as one, or many more potential combinations of facial features reading as one face. Unlike cinema, books, or other sequential art forms, painting allows us to see multiple points in a story at one time.  We are unable to pin down one cohesive interpretation of the figure despite being able to see them all just as she cannot get one cohesive vision of herself despite knowing herself best.
A girl sits cross legged on the floor with her eyes popping out of her head and her tongue and teeth coming out of the bottom of her jaw. Her arms are lifted up and pointing down in a playful pose. She has dyed her hair blue and tied it up into space buns. She is silly, strange, and irreverent, beckoning the viewer to join her in this play. Should you remain serious and go about your day or embody some of the mischief, curiosity, and amusement presented by this figure? In an alternative reading, this piece also fits into the Fractured Identity series. Her eyes leave their sockets, her teeth and tongue are outside of her mouth, and the composition forces the viewer to oscillate between multiple focal points; seeing her empty sockets, nose, and mouth as one, seeing her detached eyeballs and mouth as one, or many more potential combinations of facial features reading as one face. Unlike cinema, books, or other sequential art forms, painting allows us to see multiple points in a story at one time. We are unable to pin down one cohesive interpretation of the figure despite being able to see them all just as she cannot get one cohesive vision of herself despite knowing herself best.