Heads Series, 2003–2005

In 1996 I started using earth and oil as my material for drawing and painting in an extensive ongoing series titled Earth Marks, Heads, Notes from Journal and Notations. In the series Heads, I explore the aspect of transformation. By using linseed oil mixed with earth and manipulating the material on mylar, the heads seem to form by themselves informing me of evolving possibilities of expression and transformation.

“The exhibition revolves around the series of paintings titled Heads. In this series, the artist explores the human head -- and the human condition. Each is a unique moment of vision and an icon of pure interiority. These eloquent heads seem to have an inner life, as they emerge into the foreground and simultaneously recede into the backdrop. Unsettling, the work is hard to turn away from, reminding us of Rilke's words from the first of the Duino Elegies: 'For the beautiful is nothing/but the beginning of the terrifying...'”

“In this core body of work, Safdie employs a simple yet vital and expressive technique. She mixes linseed oil and samples of earth which she has collected from places during her travels. So the work is literally of the earth, but also a potent metaphor for transformation.” (1)

“For while Safdie’s looming heads, mummy like and pictographic at the same time, seem as troublingly remote and pitiable as messages from the deep, antique past, they are inescapably about mortality – everyone’s mortality and the fragility of life.” (2)

(1) James D. Campbell, 2004, Montreal
(2) Gary Michael Dault, Giant heads, fierce spears: totems of mortality, The Globe and Mail, Sept.11, 2004