This work further investigates the ever fluctuating, yet age old concern, of vanity. As the years pass, styles come in and out, new ideas of beauty emerge, and with those ideas, extremes of how to capture such a beauty are desired while others are left behind. Such suggestions of beauty are broadcast from birth until death, and with this pressure, where are the individuals who, whether trapped or openly embracing these ideals, left? Are these people wrong for embracing such ideals? Through participating in our culture's image of vanity, how does it veil many from their own natural beauty? What is the attraction that exists in either the act or outcome of these rituals? And where is the line drawn between self-inflicting harm versus “self-improvement”? These are some of the questions that my work is beginning to explore through the use of both oil on canvas and pastels on paper.