Carol Saft: My Wife, Masked and Unmasked
The Little Gallery
June 14 – July 20 Reception: Sat, June 14, 5-7 pm

The Arts Center at Duck Creek is proud to present My Wife, Masked and Unmasked, a solo exhibition by artist and filmmaker Carol Saft, whose deeply personal paintings explore the fragile rituals of intimacy, love, aging, and visibility. In this striking new body of work, Saft captures her wife Cynthia in private moments of rest, self-care, and vulnerability—often in bed, or in the bathroom, glowing beneath the surreal, fluorescent light of a beauty mask.

These are not conventional portraits. They are offerings—moments suspended in time, where the viewer is allowed a rare, unfiltered glimpse into the quiet interiority of a long relationship. Cynthia appears nude, half-dressed, wrapped in a towel or bathed in the unnatural light of so-called “healing” devices. The body is unposed, the gestures are familiar, and we wonder what is being revealed, and what remains unknowable? Known for her documentary shorts and experimental video series My Brother Todd, Saft brings a filmmaker’s instinct to her painting—carefully framing each scene like a shot, using color and lighting with theatrical precision.

“I believe that our most intimate moments reveal the beautiful imperfection of our humanity,” Saft writes in her artist statement. This guiding principle is palpable in every painting: from the mundane to the absurd, the erotic to the tender, each work resists idealization in favor of emotional truth. The fluorescent glow of a beauty mask becomes both armor and spotlight; a bed becomes both sanctuary and stage.

That tension—of the unresolved, the unspoken—is what gives My Wife, Masked and Unmasked its quiet power. The work documents the space between two people over time, where love is steady but never static. These scenes are filled with care and curiosity. They resist sentimentality. They embrace awkwardness, absurdity, and imperfection as essential parts of intimacy.

Importantly, Saft’s work also fills a gap in how queer domestic life—especially between women—is represented in art. By portraying Cynthia so honestly—masked and unmasked—Saft not only shares a portrait of her partner, but also of herself: a witness, a lover, an artist attentive to the quiet gestures that might otherwise go unseen. My Wife, Masked and Unmasked is a love story told through the accumulation of ordinary moments. It is both specific and universal. It asks us to consider how we see the ones we love—and how we allow ourselves to be seen.

Carol Saft is an artist, filmmaker, and activist whose work has been shown at the Smithsonian Institute, the Parrish Art Museum, Canada Gallery, and many other national and international venues. Her practice spans painting, sculpture, and video, with a consistent focus on emotional vulnerability, social connection, and the strange beauty of daily life.