This is my first artwork directly dealing with the subject of death. Previously, however, I wrote a lot of poems about death and was even working on a chapbook that I never finished. Like everybody else I fear death. I probably made this series of portraits primarily as a way to deal with my own fear of death. All the faces in these portraits are of people I know. They are all about my age (early twenties to early thirties.) I wanted it to be obvious (without looking at the titles) that the paintings were about death, so I closed their eyes and used a black matt background. I was inspired by ancient Egyptian coffins that bear a colorful painted ideal of the deceased within, do I painted my death masks colorful instead of pale. Some of them almost seem to be smiling. I hung the portraits on the wall at the heights of the real individuals, so that they are standing up, and so that when these paintings were exhibited, my (very much alive!) models could look at their own "death mask" right at eye level.