Arshile Gorky is an icon in art and in Armenian-American culture. That his persona and his paintings were created and viewed through layers of hidden truths captivates me. In my recent work, I use one of Gorky's well-known paintings, The Artist and His Mother, ca.1926-36, to create masks that are worn by myself, my partner, friends and family. The masks bring up questions about the nature of performance, covering, truth, deception, facade, and inner vs. outer worlds. It is a separation device and a defense mechanism, but also the point of connection as many viewers are familiar with this wonderfully haunting gaze. By covering his true Armenian identity, Vosdan Adoyan, Gorky chose to symbolically erase his deeply traumatic past and begin anew. This act of masking and reinventing continues to exist in contemporary Armenian-American traditions that I witnessed growing up in California - from concealing one's inner desires out of fear of rejection to adopting an Americanized pronunciation of an ethnic name. In this series, the subjects appear in common portraits of domestic life, with its assumed love and happiness, but the facade is evident.