Face Plant

Confusion peaks curiosity in most. Mark Raidt, an artist from northern Minnesota, created an intricate painting with many ideas and mysteries. Face Plant, a mind altering painting with numerous details throughout really challenges the viewer’s perspective.

. I did my best to figure out this painting. The first thing I notice is the dark background that looms in around the whole painting. A green fog, filled with faces rising up from the ground, floats up to the top of the page. The top left has a more distinct set of faces in the green mist, but they are arranged in a totem pole fashion.

The forehead and eyes are the same face, but then splits into two different noses and mouths. The middle is a pair of faces, and below another pair of faces ending the pole. I look right of the page from the totem pole my eyes pass little faces floating in the green mist. I hit a bigger face, it’s a full normal face with droopy eyes, and has another eye on his forehead. On the top right there is a set of faces in the green fog, a few smaller than others some larger. The last face on the top right is a bigger face with a normal human features, nose, mouth, eyes all of it.

As I look down the right side of the page, there is a purplish haze. I come to a snowman. He is the corner piece of the whole painting: the eye catcher. Next to the snowman to the left is a face that looks torn and distraught. On the left side of the face nose mushrooms, a nose with the top of a mushroom with eyes under the mushroom top indicating a face. More to the left there is a pair of bigger mushrooms just sitting there.

Regular mushrooms are scattered along the bottom, but don’t pop out as much as the nose mushrooms. On the far left side of the painting there is a little man painted on as if it were looking back at whoever is looking at the painting. A gloomy, saddening feeling comes over me while looking at the little man. He looks lost, trying to get out of the painting. One major thing I saw most in this picture was faces of many emotions.I wanted to reach through and see what it would feel like if I touched those faces, to feel those emotions.

I think of life and death while looking at this painting. Green fog with faces rising into heaven. A graveyard in the cold night. I think the snowman is there to show the coldness of the painting. As the faces rise higher they fade out more. I look at that as them finally reaching their destination in heaven.

The faces down below are a little more filled in, more alive looking. I am assuming they are still living, like lives being still on the ground. Another meaning to this piece could be depression. The faces in the green fog are the spirits and hopes of people floating around, lost not knowing what to do. Lingering around waiting for something to happen. Compared to all Mark Raidt’s other paintings, this painting is the black sheep.

This painting is darker, more mysterious. Dark and mysterious, the side everyone has but never show. Mark Raidt is trying to show his dark and mysterious side through this painting. The faces, the mushrooms, and the snowman, he may be trying to say something. I’ll never know that side of Mark, but when I look at this painting I can kind of feel it. I love this painting.

It captures so much attention with every little detail he put into it. Everytime I look at this painting I find something new to think about, or a new theory of what the painting may mean. That’s why I think I love it so much, the way it makes me rethink of it in a new way every time I look at it. Mark Raidt painted something great, but only few will ever actually see it. I am one of the lucky few who got to see this painting with my own eyes. Maybe one day people from all around will see it, but until then it lays in an art museum in a small room just waiting to be seen.