Scrimshaw: Faces, Figures and Letters

Both works use one dominant color to trace the head, but here far more empty ground surrounds the form, making the face feel less anchored.

Where the previous head floats freely against open ground, this face is buried under dense overlapping strands, the vivid purple field pressing inward rather than releasing the form.

Both works use a warm field to contain a tangled head, but this face is more open and its peach-pink flesh tones lighter, the marks spreading outward rather than pressing inward.

The warm-field looseness of the previous work tightens here: the head nearly fills the square and the marks grow heavier and more insistent.

Both works use a yellow-orange ground and crowded marks, but this head introduces rigid rectangular shapes that make the face feel built rather than drawn.

The orbiting loops of the previous work become directional here: marks escape upward and outward rather than circling the form.

The bright yellow ground gives way to flat gray, and the face interior, though densely colored, is pressed under heavy black scribble that makes the X-mark and open mouth feel like the only points of clarity.

The single X-mark of the previous work expands here into three competing eye forms, multiplying the points of uncertainty across the face.

Both works show a face surrounded by tangled strands, but here the head reasserts its full-frame scale, the spiral eyes lock the gaze, and the pale vertical ground replaces the expansive hair-like field.

The spiral eyes of the previous work reappear here in a more extreme asymmetry, and the yellow ground intensifies the sense of forward pressure.

The bullseye eye of the previous work becomes a full forehead spiral here, the warm yellow center surrounded by radiating pink-red strands, and the face divides vertically rather than varying eye by eye.

The radiating lines that escaped upward in earlier works now push simultaneously in every direction, and the blue ground at the edges gives the dispersal a cooler frame that sharpens the warm interior.

Both works use a hot yellow field and tangled reds, but this face introduces skull-like exposed teeth and chain forms that shift the register toward something more structural.

The skull reading of the previous work intensifies here: the black ground and three symmetrical sockets make this the most mask-like and confrontational face in the sequence.

The frontal face gives way to a profile, and the single-pass outline multiplies into layered offsets that make the skull appear to vibrate.

The single profile of the previous work doubles here, but the two heads remain isolated despite their closeness, the near-black ground deepening the gap between them rather than letting it breathe.

The two isolated profiles become three heads pressed shoulder to shoulder, and a new layer of white marks partially covers the features just established.

Three heads become a grid of many, the vivid purple ground formalizing the crowd into cells where the varied fills surface faces from noise without letting any single one settle.

Three figures become five, the light airy ground replacing the orange field of the previous work, and the crossing lines between bodies remain sparse enough that each figure keeps its own color identity within the shared row.

The five standing figures give way to two letters that use the same overlapping mark language as every face in the show, asking whether the greeting replaces or simply is a face.