oa The mask and the mirror

After retiring from the field of drama therapy in 2018, I resumed my career as an artist, making theatre, music and visual art. Since that time I have focused most on creating both actual and digital images through photography. In February 2024, I completed an exhibition of 60 images launched on an international platform, Art without Boundaries, in March 2024. The exhibition concerns a series of photographs I created in the late 1970s of people wearing masks that I made on my face. The early photographs were very much about my fascination with masks as self-portraiture. I paired the old images with new ones of new masks of my face on some of the same people 45 years later, and some new people. In this creative contribution, I present my artist statement for the exhibition and then one photograph that was in the show. And below that is a playful image visually expressing an idea that has been with me for more than fifty years – that a human being is multiplicitous and that, like an actor onstage, has the potential to play many roles.