Title: Do you know the secret?
Date: June 1999
Size: 112cm x 112cm
Medium: Oil on canvas

The face of a woman in a Sunday magazine inspired this painting. This whole series of new heads was a transitional time for my paintings. I had always painted my head paintings, since I started doing them in 1985, from within myself. That is to say I had deliberately avoided the use of a model. When I started to paint these new paintings after not painting heads for more than four years, I began using the same method as I had before. But it was no longer serving my needs and I suddenly started to look for some photos, as described in the poem accompanying three of these new faces.