Ralph Eugene Meatyard: Romances

The series presents portraits of the artist’s wife wearing a dime-store hag’s mask, paired with various family members and friends who wear a transparent hard-plastic mask. The titles of the images outline cryptic relationships, and in all instances, both figures are identified by the same name: Lucybelle Crater.

Meatyard’s staged images—set in abandoned spaces and often using masks and props—are at once familiar and enigmatic, reflecting the artist’s fascination with the uncanniness of ordinary life.

Using movement to follow luminescent, broken reflections in water, the artist’s experimental photographs create a free-form effect similar to qualities of Abstract Expressionist paintings.

Photographed in the open landscape or in simple rural environments, this series evokes the transcendental aspects of nature.