I try to remember to pack a few black washcloths when I travel for work. I place them next to the hotel sink, ready to be used when I get back from a shoot, sparing the provided pristine towels from smears of jet black mascara and kisses of Dior 999. When I forget, the association is immediate. A face imprinted on cloth. An unintentional self-portrait—not of my own face, but of the one I wear to do my work.
It is a version of this experience I imagine Katelyn Ledford had in mind when conceiving her painting “Veil of Artist at Home,” which I saw last year at New York’s Fredericks & Freiser Gallery as part of the group show, Persona. Named for the Ingmar Bergman film, the exhibition featured work from 16 emerging and established artists exploring the nature of identity as it relates to “the presence of the other.” Ledford’s contribution is one of the most recent in a series of her works that bring together long-standing art historical themes with contemporary visuals highlighting the barriers and challenges of navigating a commercial art world that expects the artist to be as much of an artistic construction as the work itself.
In Veil of Artist at Home, Ledford reinterprets the a-canonical story of the Veil of Veronica, which tells of the moment when a woman offered Jesus a cloth with which to wipe sweat and blood from his face as he carried the cross to Golgotha. The returned cloth contained an imprint—a self-portrait of sorts, produced by “other than human means” referred to as the “vero icona” or true image of Christ. Considered a miraculous relic, the cloth claimed by the Roman Catholic Church to be the original is housed at St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, with other versions located throughout Europe and Latin America. In all cases, the portrait is seen as one of veneration and respect; an image not so much of Jesus’s human form, but one born out of the labor of his sacrifice.
Of particular fascination for artists in the Baroque era who relished in the questions it posed of creation both artistic and divine, the image of Veronica’s veil was a common subject for artists like El Greco, Domenico Fetti, and—notably--Francisco Zurbarán, who painted at least a dozen iterations. The hyperreal trompe l’oeil and trampantajo techniques of these latter two seem most evident in Ledford’s acid-tongued (or perhaps brushed?) interpretation.
Painted with her signature photorealistic technique from a physical still life she built in her studio to serve as a model, the large-scale work depicts a creased and soiled linen dinner napkin (perhaps the kind one might reach for during a schmoozy networking dinner) hanging from a thin white laundry line set in relief against a wall of oak and walnut-stained wood panels. Affixed with two delicate dressmaker pins, the napkin drapes with folds that mimic the precise bends and fall of the veil in Zurbarán’s 17th century works.
It is with the image of the face, however, that Ledford’s work diverges. Instead of Jesus, the image of veneration we see here is the imprint of the makeup worn by a clown: brash teal and turquoise eyeshadow going up past its black eyebrows arched in permanent surprise, a red nose—bulbous and grotesque, dramatic round puffs of red blush, and a pair of lips with lipstick extending long past its natural corners forcing the mouth into a sad downward turn.
Five fat clear acrylic teardrops pour out of the eyes down toward the bottom of the cloth—bringing to mind both the sorrow of Christ (and accompanying reported stories of similar relics springing forth miraculous tears) as well as the motif of the sad clown. Another symbol which dates to the 17th century in Moliere’s Pierrot, though the color palette of Ledford’s work seems to better recall the themes of loneliness and isolation in the garishly painted faces of the clown and prostitute in Edward Hopper’s 1914 Soir Bleu—two characters for whom professional success is inextricable from their ability to perform feigned connection.
In stripping down the image to the bare minimum necessary to suggest a human face, the Ledford questions the nature of what makes a portrait, while exploring self-portraiture focused on capturing not the person but the persona—the masks we wear as we move through the world. Notably, in Veil of Artist at Home, Ledford references the specific moment when her mask comes off, transferred to the canvas, true self and sentiments revealed.
At the bottom right, a final telling divergence from classic imagery of the veil: a small flame charring the corner of the napkin, seconds away from overtaking the entire piece of fabric. A possible allusion to sanctification by fire? Or a desire to let the whole business go up in flames?
Katelyn Ledford (b. 1994) “Veil of Artist at Home” 2025 60 x 48 inches, acrylic and oil on canvas