Masquerade

Domenic Cretara noted that the idea for this drawing came to him while he was investigating figures and symbols from the Commedia del Arte for a series exploring Italian-American identity roles and family dynamics. The masks in the drawing belong to his son, who was studying acting at the time.

He observed: “The content of the drawing emerged as I worked on the piece. I found that I was not so much dealing with the familiar trope of the persona behind which we hide our true selves; rather the personalities that the people in my drawing were adopting allowed them to connect with an ancient symbolism of human passions and frailties, joys and satisfactions. They are taking part in the age-old universal ‘theater of life.’”