DAY 258

UNEXPECTED ART FORMS

Cosmetic Interpretation

ART TRANSFERRED FROM CANVAS TO CUTIS

I’ll be brutally honest for a minute: I’m not the sort of person who notices the finer points of a woman’s make-up.

That being said, even I can appreciate the talent and creativity required to take one artist’s painting and distill its abstract subtleties into a few square inches of a person’s face.

Marlena Reichert is a self-professed “make-up geek” who has mastered the medium so thoroughly as to be able to digest a visual image and represent the overall gestalt of its colors through cosmetics. After all, according to Marlena, “make-up, itself, is art.”

In addition to abstractly representing artwork such as Mary Capan’s oil painting (right), Marlena has created cosmetic translations of particularly vibrant flowers, including purple posies.

Marlena has posted a number of online instructional videos that guide the viewer through this intricate process, from the application of primer and eye shadow pencil to the selection and blending of colors. Her website invites readers to “embrace your cosmetic addiction.”

I’ll stick with my own caffeine addiction, thank you very much. —DJS