The representational power of images in contemporary culture and the symbolic potency of that which is strategically hidden or missing from view is the focus of my work. Adopting an illustrative style and drawing from a stockpile of mediated images, my recent paintings allude to the complex and entangled ways in which we picture others and ourselves. I appropriate the tropes and traditions of portraiture in an ongoing attempt to represent and articulate subjects hidden from view-disguised by the covering of the hood. The hood, while ubiquitously linked with terrorists in our news media, is not a consistent or dependable sign and can be sourced to a variety of contexts including religious processionals, military regalia, superhero masks, and perhaps most revealing, the hoods worn by both terrorists and their prisoners. I utilize the characteristics of gouache, a material of intense color and opacity, to model and articulate the form of the hood until the layers of paint rematerialize as a covering over the surface of the paper.