off with their heads !

i will always be unavoidably ensnared by portrait work that defaces or obscures the head and face. thomas robson's work is no exception. i think this attraction stems from a kind of anxiety i feel when viewing ruined heads. i can commiserate with the 'otherness' taking place, as to take away the face seems to take away the very root of a person. it is a bit unnerving. 

 here, i am especially interested in the whimsical violence of this obscuring; splashes of milk white paint or flowers bloom over the appropriated bodies of royalty and upper class figures who are now long dead. in this way, the artist has performed a kind of double theft . . .