Baroque Medusa

I didn’t ease back into this piece.

I broke through with it.

After weeks of creative resistance, Say Ahhh came together quickly but not accidentally. It started with something direct. Close. Personal.

A series of self-portraits focused on my mouth.

Not composed in the traditional sense. Cropped tightly. Intimate to the point of discomfort. Lips, tongue, expression—isolated and repeated until they stopped reading as a single moment and started behaving like material.

Fragmentation Through Structure

I wasn’t interested in building a standard collage.

I wanted something more controlled. Something that could hold repetition without becoming chaotic.

The puzzle frame structure gave me that.

Each segment acts as its own contained unit, but none of them exist independently. They rely on each other. Interrupt each other. Distort the continuity of the image.

Color as Distortion

Once the composition was set, I pushed the color.

Not for aesthetics, for disruption.

Highly saturated tones. Artificial shifts. Texture layered until the surface felt almost synthetic. The kind of finish that sits somewhere between digital gloss and something more tactile.

At that point, the image stopped reading as a photograph.

A Constructed Center

The piece needed a break.

Not visually, conceptually.

So I introduced a single, off-centered, graphic element. A flattened, pop-art interpretation of the same form.

Now there’s a divide between:

• something lived and something constructed
• something organic and something reproduced
• something real and something designed to represent it

Artwork Details

Artist: Baroque Medusa
Title: Say, Ahhh
Series: Abstract Distortions
Medium: Digital collage and photographic manipulation
Year: 2026

Say, Ahhh is available as a canvas print through my Etsy shop.

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