Masks On, It’s Mending Time.
Wearing a mask is something that I’ve grown quite accustomed to do once lockdown began back in March of 2020. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, I’ve collected a plethora of masks: a reusable pink one, a box of grey and black disposable ones kept tidy in my desk drawers that are my go-to, a Mickey Mouse one, my FVHS Dance one, and of course my favorite — my Rilakumma printed mask I bought from Daiso. On days when I need to make a quick run to my nearby Target for some items, I’ll get ready to go outside before hastily choosing a mask to place over my mouth and nose before heading out for the day.
Walking around public places, I find that it’s much more harder to read a person’s emotions. Last week, I entered my local Target in order to pick up a few self-care items. Meandering through the aisles, I couldn’t help but notice how restricted I was to reading people. Yes, the eyes are the window to the soul. However, simply being shown only the window gives a very limited look at a person’s presence. More than ever is it easy to paint a facade of emotion with wearing masks. While walking through Target, I had to ask a worker to assist me in finding a certain brand of moisturizer. I approached the worker in order to ask for some help.
“Hi! Do you know where (brand name)’s moisturizer can be found?”
The worker was kneeled down looking at the items (I can’t exactly recall what they were doing). They looked up at me with an unreadable expression and sighed before getting up on their knees slowly.
“Sure, follow me I’ll show you.”
As an avid over thinker, my intrusive thoughts started piling up in my head: Was this worker having a bad day? Argh, I can’t tell if they were smiling or not under their mask! What if they were sighing because they were getting up from their knees? Do I even need this product? I don’t even know why I even ask-
“It looks like it’s right over here! The moisturizer is this one, correct?” The worker pointed to the shelf of containers and I changed my focus to looking at the packaging carefully.
“Ah yes! This is the right one. Thank you so much!” and with that, the worker expressed their gratitude that I was able to find my item before we both parted ways.
Masks make it so much more difficult for me to analyze how a person may be feeling. I, someone who really likes scanning my surroundings to get a feel of how I should act, decided very early on in this pandemic that I would put my best efforts forward to decipher how a person might be feeling that day; Essentially, I take the window of the soul, infer how someone’s doing, and from the inference, make sure I try my best to be the person they need me to be that day.
When looking at Nathaniel Mary Quinn’s Mend, I realized how much emotion was put into his work. He takes these fragments of a cartoon-style painted nose and mouth and realistically painted eyes and puts them together to create a single portrait of this individual. The lips and nose are much more brighter and vibrant compared to the rest of the painting, emmulating a sense of youthful vibrancy despite the lack of a smile. However, the eyes, painted in black and white, carry a solemn gaze, and surrounded by such animated colors, seem off-putting.
This painting, and also in many of Quinn’s work, depicts the struggle of feeling whole as an individual and the complexity of emotions one feels. Different fragments of a face can express different emotions, and Quinn utilizes this to show the complexity of the human mind and how it’s able to interpret various emotions in a single gaze. The title of this specific piece, Mend, perfectly ties in everything I needed to know to interpret the painting in my own way; We as individuals are constantly looking for ways to piece ourselves together as whole, to mend ourselves up in order to understand our world more.
Conveying and expressing emotions can be hard, especially nowadays with half of our faces being covered up. However, we can still be able to understand each other safely. More than ever is it important for us to communicate with others, and check up on the people we care about in a safe manner so we can ultimately mend each other through this difficult time.
Original SQUIDD (a.k.a analysis) on Nathaniel Mary Quinn’s Mend can be found here ❤.
