Ugly Beauties

This series began in April 2013, just as I was finishing esthetics school. The mannequin I used for makeup practice — I call her Lolly — was my muse. One day, out of boredom and frustration, I took an image of Lolly from my iPad and deformed her. I liked what I saw so I added glaze, grunge, a few more distortions, a few drips, and finally had my first of more than 30 Ugly Beauties. This series is all about emotional caricatures. I find it fascinating to distort the blank face of a mannequin, somehow making the resulting image look more alive than the original. All Ugly Beauties evolved from this image of Lolly (inset), photographed with an iPad2 and edited with a variety of apps to create multiple personalities.

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