Mark Karasick, born in 1959 and raised in Canada, attended Art College in Toronto. He was introduced to encaustic painting in 1983 and has since continued to experiment with this Greco-Roman technique, mostly known through the Egyptian mummy portraits from Fayum and Hawara. In 1989, during his first visit to Italy, his work came to the attention of Swiss-Italian collector Signor Carlo Monzino, who sponsored Karasick to remain in Italy for five years of continued research and practice.

As Karasick’s first foray into video, Michael examines the visual reflections of changing psychological states, here expressed by the young son of a museum director acquaintance. Karasick, who works primarily with painting, made this video as a study for a series of portraits. Similar to Bill Viola’s video works that depict series of evolving emotions, Michael uses close-ups, slow motion and black-and-white to emphasize an intimate, home video-like relation with the film’s emotive protagonist.