A Three Dimensional Canvas
She took a deep breath and looked at herself in the mirror. Carefully examining her face, she added the finishing touches to her self-designed masterpiece. As an artist using her body as an canvas, Lilly Schreiter admired her finished project.
Schreiter's interest in the realm of creative makeup first sparked at thirteen. As YouTube boomed with popular beauty bloggers, she was intrigued by the tutorials. In boarding school, she began to express her creativity as a makeup artist for the theater class. She then decided to enroll in a three month course to pursue her passion during her gap year.
"This was different for me," Schreiter recalls, "because for the first time, I was practicing makeup on other people rather than just myself." After this, she was hooked. On evenings, she began to play around with makeup on herself. "I usually try out new designs a few times a week." Placing diamonds on her face, she added, "It takes about three and a half hours, and my creativity usually sparks around midnight." Finding herself decorated at three in the morning is not an unlikely occurrence.
Schreiter's abstract influence triggered from modern art. "I love Kadinksy." Schreiter smiles. "Most of my inspiration comes from visits to the Centre Pompidou."
The move from theater to an abstract style has lead her to new perceptions on makeup in society. Rather than using makeup as a natural beauty concealer, she uses it as an art form. Currently, her perspective has her moving away from the face, and decorating the body. Makeup is a fun expression of diversity for Schreiter. "I don't want makeup to be about beauty anymore," she says. "I want to find my own perception of beauty. I want to see what makeup can achieve, not what it covers up." As she finds a balance in her aesthetic, she continues to play around with different styles and designs.
"It shows that there's no such thing as a fixed identity," she says. "Being used recklessly, it can be the visual representation of all the different layers of one's personality. That is why some people are afraid of using it. It actually doesn't cover as much as it reveals about a person."
Photography by Rebecca Simor
