Spirit of the crab - pine "mask" 1996

This piece is one of my first carvings ever, which dates it way back to around 1995-1996.  When I first began carving, I experimented the most with masks because there is so much room for error in making them.  If you make a mistake, ok, try something new.  In this case, the original design (soon to be available below) was not a crab or a "spirit of a crab", but rather a mask with long, stylized hair (the crabs legs), and two large hoop earrings/ears - now the claws.  As the project evolved, so too did my idea of what I wanted to create.  As for the paint, it was inspired by my wife's trip to Australia, where aboriginal "dot art" is quite popular.  I'm not much of a painter usually, but using hundreds of small dots to create color and texture is more manageable for me than traditional painting.