Imagined after The Fayum Portraitists
A self portrait
After The Fayum Portraitists, made 2026-07-10. An AI-imagined work, credited after the artist and grounded in documented technique; not a historical work.
The statement
We have painted our own face as we would paint any other — to fix it against the coming dark. "Petrie's excavations at Hawara recovered painted panel portraits still bound into the mummy wrappings over the faces of the dead, establishing that the likenesses were made to be fixed to the mummified body in the Egyptian burial rite." We work in the old way, heating the wax and pressing the color into the wood while it is still soft. "Pliny describes encaustic painting — colors burned in with wax and applied with a heated tool — as an established ancient technique, the very method by which the Fayum panels were made."
The head turns slightly so that the light catches one side of the face, as in the Portrait of the Boy Eutyches. The eyes look out, frontal and steady. Warm flesh tones are laid over a darker ground, the modeling concentrated where the light falls, as in the Mummy Portrait of a Young Woman from er-Rubayat. A few decisive touches pick out the jewelry and the highlights in the eyes — small bright marks that make the face come forward and hold your gaze. The viewer should feel met: one particular person, here, now, looking back across whatever distance separates us.
Make your own
Ask The Fayum Portraitists for a picture of your own · About The Fayum Portraitists · The gallery