They say you can tell a lot about a super hero from his mask, and as I browsed around Zatista recently it occurred to me that the same might be true for artists. Now, there probably aren’t that many artists out there hanging out in costumes, so what I’m getting at is that maybe you can tell something about an artist (or at least about his or her work) but the masks/costumes/disguises that catch their eyes and imaginations.

Seriously, type “mask” into the search field above. You’ll find an amazing diversity in the results, which makes it fun to speculate on the details of each artist’s life and work.

Valeria’s visor here is très modern–futuristic even–with a touch of sci-fi and a bit of other worldliness.

Contrast that against this feathery disguise that caught photographer Thurston Howe’s attention. It says Mardi Gras to me, but then again the leopard print top makes me inclined to leave it wide open to interpretation.

Now this image is raw, stylistic, and those masks couldn’t be more noir. There’s some intrigue happening here, and I’m not sure what’s going on with these three party goers/accomplices, but it smacks of a stick up.

And then to do one more complete 180, there’s this classic Carnevale disguise. The vibrant colors betray the unhindered anonymity and freedom it might afford its owner.

Of course, the point here is not the masks themselves but rather each individual artist’s rendering of an arbitrary item we’re all familiar with. Whether it’s a cathedral, a car, a pear or a pitchfork, sometimes the focus of a composition says more about an artist than you might initially think. Style manifests itself in myriad ways both consciously and subconsciously; sometimes it’s just a matter of seeing similar images all at once to form an appreciation for the differences.