Artwork
Digital Prints
Inversions
Skull Portraits
Sculptures
Paintings
Short Films
SKULL PORTRAITS 1995 - PRESENT
THE DEEPER 'I'
"The first skull portrait I made in 1995 was a self-portrait and it was based on a full frontal x-ray - radiograph of my skull. It was an investigation into who I am beyond the facade.
Originally I made the skull portraits as a way to explore identity - independent of the ways we are normally defined - the face, the gender, the age, the skin colour, our name etc.
With this form of 'portraiture' the mortality of the subject is not relevant to how the portrait looks. In this sense the portrait hints at a 'self' that transcends mortality".
Alexander de Cadenet 2022
"In his skull portraits, de Cadenet is using modern art language and processes to communicate the vital spiritual teaching of death in a way that is relevant to our time"
Patrick Howe, author of 'The Awakened Artist', in Watkins Mind Body Spirit Magazine.
"The skull portraits tackle both the the idea of mortality and also the question of how we construe human identity"
Edward Lucie-Smith, 2016
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"De Cadenet’s Skull Portraits re-energise the long histories of the painted vanitas….There is a ghoulish humour in de Cadenet’s jest with the skull image: these will persist, of course long after we become crematorium dust"
Sarah Wilson, professor at The Courtauld Institute of Art, (2010)
"De Cadenet made art which to some extent parodied the celebrity world which he inhabited"
Harriet Mueller in 'Art of England'
