The mirrored gaze - inspired by Rubens

Narcisse - acrylic on panel - 24x18 - 2014.

Venus at her Mirror, by Peter Paul Rubens, circa 1614-15.

I came across Rubens' wonderful self-gazing Venus again the other day; as is already obvious, this lovely painting was the inspiration for one of my own from three years ago. The history of beauty in art has largely been based on the depiction and objectification of the female face and form. I always enjoy honoring/subverting that history by taking the iconic images of sensual beauty and placing a male face and form in the woman's former pose; I think men still have plenty of catching up to do where objectification is concerned.

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And because scans, for all their many virtues, often seem to flatten out modeling and texture, skew color balance, limit the range of color, here are photographs - which obviously have their own limitations - taken at the painting's completion, and which maybe give more of an idea of the actual modeling, texture, and color balance and range; if there were only some way to blend the two processes...?