Imagined after The Fayum Portraitists
An untitled study
After The Fayum Portraitists, made 2026-08-05. An AI-imagined work, credited after the artist and grounded in documented technique; not a historical work.
The statement
I have set this face in encaustic wax on a thin panel of wood, as I have done for others, so that it may be bound over the wrapped body and go with the dead into the tomb. The work is made to endure: I heat the wax and burn the colors into the surface, layer by layer, as Pliny describes—pigment suspended in wax, applied with the heated tool, so that the image becomes one with the support and will not fade or flake away with time. The face must be specific, a true likeness down to the shape of the eyes, the turn of the head, the ornaments worn in life, because this panel will lie over the actual face in the burial and must preserve the individual presence of the one who has died.
I build the flesh in warm lights over a darker ground, modeling the cheek and brow so that they catch the light as living skin does, then add the eyes last—dark accents that look out directly, meeting your gaze. The encaustic surface remains alive under the hand, each loaded touch visible, so that the face does not become fixed and dead but continues to address you with immediacy. This is the purpose: to hold a particular person here, to let them be seen and met, long after the body has been wrapped and sealed.
Make your own
Ask The Fayum Portraitists for a picture of your own · About The Fayum Portraitists · The gallery