High Brow

My motivation for High Brow is based on the struggles, triumphs, and acceptance of my trichotillomania, a body focused repetitive behavior where people have the urge to pull out their own hair. For fifteen years, my eyebrows have been my target and there have been periods of time where they were filled with bald patches. I still pull, but my eyebrows have grown in to become my most defining feature. They’ve become a crucial part of my self-identity. As a result of my trich, I focus a lot on other people’s eyebrows because of my own self-consciousness. Eyebrows are the most expressive feature on a face. They give so much information about people, their thoughts, and their emotions. Through High Brow, I wanted to demonstrate that even without half of someone’s face shown, you can still identify who they are, what they are like, and what emotions they’re experiencing based on their eyebrows and the background that is related to their personality and aesthetic.

High Brow began as a singular painted self-portrait. It evolved over the course of a year to become a digital portrait series featuring nine of my peers, which I presented as my Undergraduate Senior Thesis Project at the University of Mary Washington in 2019. Since graduation, I have continued to create paintings and digital portraits for this series.