The Figure Is You: Edgar Arceneaux on Skinning the Mirror (Spring) 

Skinning the Mirror (Spring) began with Edgar Arceneaux’s chance discovery that the magic of mirrors rests on a tenuous, relatively easy-to-remove skin of silver adhered to glass. An equally unexpected collision of personal experiences transformed the question of what the silver skin could do if stripped from the glass from a material abstraction into a meditation on memory, care, and the marks life leaves on us. After a particularly challenging day caring for his mother, who was living with dementia, Arceneaux was struck by the similarities between her fragile physical form and the paintings he was making by scratching into, painting on, and otherwise manipulating the exposed silver on the backs of mirrors and transferring the results to canvases.

Ultimately, however, Arceneaux hopes that works like Skinning the Mirror (Spring) speak to something bigger than his own story because if you get close enough to one of these scarred, scraped, but still shimmering surfaces, you just may glimpse your own reflection.